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India to write off dues worth 
954.4 million
Friday, 06 June 2003, 19:30 IST
NEW DELHI: India has decided to write off dues worth 
954.4 million as on March 31 from seven heavily indebted poor countries.
The move is a "goodwill gesture", a finance ministry official said, listing the countries as Mozambique, Tanzania, Zambia, Guyana, Nicaragua, Ghana and Uganda.
All these moves are a result of India's comfortable foreign exchange reserve position of over $80 billion, sources said.
The decision to write off the debt follows the implementation of the India Development Initiative Fund (IDIF) with a corpus of two billion for the fiscal year 2003-04.
Proposed by Finance Minister Jaswant Singh in the budget, the initiative aims at promoting India as both a production centre and an investment destination. It is also to be used for promoting India's strategic economic interests.
Earlier this week, the ministry had also announced that new lines of credit to friendly developing countries would ordinarily be extended only through the IDIF. Present lines of credit would, however, continue.
Presently lines of credit worth $239 million in favour of Kyrgyzstan, Mauritius, Uzbekistan, Myanmar, Sri Lanka, Cambodia, Laos and Suriname are in progress. A line of credit worth 1.07 billion to Vietnam is in the process of being implemented.
In a move that upset some donor countries, India had also decided to repay 74.9 billion bilateral debt before schedule. It also took the decision of restricting acceptance of any future aid packages to only a few countries and multilateral bodies.
India has decided to repay all bilateral credit, except for 588.25 billion outstanding to Japan, Germany, the U.S. and France.
The balance amount of 74.9 billion is due to 14 countries including the Netherlands, Russian Federation, Canada, Sweden, Italy, Denmark, Belgium, Austria, Kuwait, Spain, Switzerland, Saudi Arabia, Australia, Czech and Slovak.
Representatives of all these countries are slated to have a close-door meeting with the finance ministry officials on Friday.
Source: IANS
954.4 million as on March 31 from seven heavily indebted poor countries.
The move is a "goodwill gesture", a finance ministry official said, listing the countries as Mozambique, Tanzania, Zambia, Guyana, Nicaragua, Ghana and Uganda.
All these moves are a result of India's comfortable foreign exchange reserve position of over $80 billion, sources said.
The decision to write off the debt follows the implementation of the India Development Initiative Fund (IDIF) with a corpus of two billion for the fiscal year 2003-04.
Proposed by Finance Minister Jaswant Singh in the budget, the initiative aims at promoting India as both a production centre and an investment destination. It is also to be used for promoting India's strategic economic interests.
Earlier this week, the ministry had also announced that new lines of credit to friendly developing countries would ordinarily be extended only through the IDIF. Present lines of credit would, however, continue.
Presently lines of credit worth $239 million in favour of Kyrgyzstan, Mauritius, Uzbekistan, Myanmar, Sri Lanka, Cambodia, Laos and Suriname are in progress. A line of credit worth 1.07 billion to Vietnam is in the process of being implemented.
In a move that upset some donor countries, India had also decided to repay 74.9 billion bilateral debt before schedule. It also took the decision of restricting acceptance of any future aid packages to only a few countries and multilateral bodies.
India has decided to repay all bilateral credit, except for 588.25 billion outstanding to Japan, Germany, the U.S. and France.
The balance amount of 74.9 billion is due to 14 countries including the Netherlands, Russian Federation, Canada, Sweden, Italy, Denmark, Belgium, Austria, Kuwait, Spain, Switzerland, Saudi Arabia, Australia, Czech and Slovak.
Representatives of all these countries are slated to have a close-door meeting with the finance ministry officials on Friday.
Source: IANS