On 15 August 2012 the Norwegian Minister of
Development Heikki Holmås announced that Norway will make an assessment of the
legitimacy of developing countries’ debt to Norway. This means that the
Norwegian government will be the first to ever carry out a creditor’s debt
audit. Since being elected in 2009, the Norwegian government has promised to
carry out a debt audit, as well as working to establish binding guidelines for
responsible lending. Now Holmås promised that the audit will now be launched,
to be followed up with new and stronger guidelines for responsible lending.
The Norwegian government has previously
admitted their responsibility as a creditor for dirty debts attached
to a particular set of loans for developing countries to buy Norwegian ships.
In 2006 the government announced that they would cancel debts for seven
countries because the original loans had been a “development policy failure”. The
Norwegian Coalition for Debt Cancellation (SLUG) has done its own investigation
of debts owed to Norway. The research reveals that a part of
Indonesia’s current debt to Norway is clearly illegitimate. SLUG shows that the
people of Indonesia is still paying for a wave power plant that was never
built, and failed technology for sea monitoring systems.
Norwegian initiatives have led to the
establishment of international principles for responsible lending and borrowing
in the UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD). The principles will be
applied in the Norwegian debt audit. In April, the UK government unsuccessfully
tried to stop UNCTAD working on responsible lending and borrowing principles. Jostein
Hole Kobbeltvedt, Eurodad representative at the UNCTAD expert group on
responsible sovereign borrowing and lending, said: “To apply the UNCTAD Principles in the Norwegian debt audit is a solid
way of showing that the Norwegian government takes the Principles seriously and
that they take their responsibility as a creditor seriously.” Development
Minister Holmås announced that the plan is for the audit to be concluded within
a year.
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