HIPC offers a way out - Pianim

The Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) Initiative provides an implicit way of dealing with the country's budget deficit and better management of public sector expenditure, Mr Kwame Pianim, an economist, has said.

According to The Times, he said it would also improve the private sector's access to commercial credit, lower inflation and interest rates.


Mr Pianim said these at a day's symposium organized by the University of Cape Coast Chapter of the Association of Economics Students (AES) as part of its fourth Annual Economics Week.

Speaking on "The Pros and Cons of HIPC," he said that the issue at stake now was no longer whether to go or not to go HIPC, but how to make the most of it.


He said that careful steps should be taken to minimize the potential demands on scarce administrative and human resources that the initiative's negotiations and processes would demand. Mr Pianim said that "the country stands to save, annually between 2001 and 2003, an amount of 230 million dollars accrued from debt servicing effected by paying 155 million dollars under the HIPC initiative".