Based on a report by Reuters

June 9, 2003

Berlin – Jean-Pierre Jouyet, Chairman of the Paris Club – an informal club of state creditors, told Reuters he expects an audit of Iraq’s debt to be completed in July. However he said creditors won’t start looking at whether Iraq needs debt reduction or a deferral of payments for some time after that.

“Because we are still collating the data, there are no substantial discussions about the future of the debt,” Jouyet said. So far, there has been no discussion of whether Iraq would need a writeoff.

“Once the data has been collated, the Paris Club would need to see an International Monetary Fund mission to Iraq and the adoption of a programme,” he said.

The approach of the Paris Club was to rely on the debtor country adopting an IMF economic masterplan, but, Jouyet said, decisions were taken by consensus on a case-by-case basis and there could be a staged approach.

“We will still be a long way from being able to assess Iraq’s medium term resource base,” he said.

For the full article “INTERVIEW – Paris Club head expects Iraq data by July” by Reuter’s David Chance please go to zaywa.com

Odious Debts Online asked Mr. Jouyet if claims against Iraq by Paris Club creditors will be made public once they are compiled, and a response was received on Thursday, June 19, from Paris Club secretariat general, Delphine d’Amarzit.

To: odiousdebts@e-p-r-f.org

… As Mr. Jouyet suggested, our data would be ready in July, and our expectation is that creditors would indeed like to publish global figures. This point has still to be agreed on a consensual basis by creditors when we have the numbers next month. Whether we would disclose country by country data would be a decision of our members (the data being the individual members’ property). As far as project by project (and agency by agency) data is concerned, we don’t collect such information. Any published information will be put on our Web site at http://www.clubdeparis.org.

Best regards,

Delphine d’Amarzit