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Developing Countries During The Cold War Under Corrupt Regimes Essay

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Developing countries spent years repaying billions of dollars in loans, many of which had been accumulated during the Cold War under corrupt regimes. Years later, these debts became a serious barrier to poverty reduction and economic development in many poor countries. Governments began taking on new loans to repay old ones and many countries ended up spending more each year to service debt payments than they did on health and education combined. Wealthy countries and international financial institutions have taken action to relieve debt burdens in many of the world’s poorest countries – primarily through the ‘Heavily Indebted Poor Country’ (HIPC) scheme and the ‘Multilateral Debt Relief Initiative’ (MDRI) (see below) – but debt burdens are still a problem.
Firstly, not all poor countries have been able to benefit debt cancellation. Some were excluded from the original HIPC deal because they had done a relatively good job in managing their debts. Today, these countries still spend a significant portion of their resources servicing their debt. In 2013, for example, Lesotho spent $40 million paying its external creditors. Kenya spent $620 million servicing its external debt, which is equal to 20% of the aid it received the same year. The HIPC scheme is now coming to an end. Except for the few countries still eligible to enter it, there is now no international process in place for dealing with government debt crisis.
A second problem is vulture funds – financial speculators

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