HISTORIC PRESS RELEASE : Gordon Brown Announces $2,000 Million Fund to Help the World’s Poorest Countries [May 1999]

The press release issued by HM Treasury on 20 May 1999.

A $2,000 million Millennium Trust Fund to speed up the debt relief process and cut the debts of the world’s poorest countries by $50 billion by the end of the year 2000 has been called for today by the Chancellor Gordon Brown and Clare Short, Secretary of State for International Development.

The aim of the Trust will be to fund over time a more ambitious programme of faster, wider and deeper debt relief which will remove a country’s unsustainable debt burden and allow resources to be reallocated to programme that reduce poverty.

To support the new Trust Fund the Chancellor and Ms Short challenged the world’s richest countries to increase their contributions to the HIPC Trust Fund and called on the European Commission to contribute resources from the European Development Fund (EDF).

The Chancellor said:

“We propose that the developed world should ensure that the Trust Fund has $2,000 million to meet the costs of an enhanced scheme. This is the final building block in our proposals, which will go the G7 meetings next month, to finance debt write-off by $50 billion by the end of the year 2000.

“We are convinced that resources from the EDF could make a major contribution to debt relief. They could be used to unshackle the poorest countries from their unsustainable debt burdens and allow those countries to tackle the greatest problem of our generation – the lack of primary education and healthcare for the poorest and most deprived. To provide the key that will unlock the door to chronic poverty”