The IMF has finally moved forward on Liberian debt relief, with the recent announcement that its members have agreed on financing. So Liberia, which is on the road to recovery with a democratically-elected government after 25 years of misrule and civil war, can at last begin the complex debt relief process known as HIPC. That could lead to interim relief in the next few months and, perhaps, to elimination of the debt in 2009. CGD senior fellow Steve Radelet, who is serving as an advisor to Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, says that this complicated process merely recognizes the obvious: today's Liberians should not be expected to repay loans that the IMF and others made to Liberian dictator Samuel Doe 25 years ago, and which have been accumulating interest ever since.
