Posted on November 19, 2012

Norway Forgives All of Ivory Coast’s Debt

Yahoo! News, November 16, 2012

Norway has cancelled what remained of Ivory Coast’s debt to the country, taking debt relief it has granted to the world’s poorest nations over 15 years to nearly half a billion dollars, the Foreign Ministry said on Friday.

Oslo wrote off $33 million owed by Ivory Coast as part of a June deal by the Paris Club of creditor nations, having already forgiven around $52 million since 1997, the ministry said.

The west African country also recently agreed a deal with commercial creditors to make coupon payments that had been missed on a $2.3 billion bond that is itself a restructuring of debt on which Ivory Coast had previously defaulted.

Tiny Norway has been among the most charitable nations in the world, regularly giving more than one percent of its gross national income in foreign aid and also providing debt relief to over a dozen of the world’s poorest countries.

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