Conclusions

As the discussion of the HIPC program's legitimacy has indicated in Part IV, assessing the program in input and output-related terms reveals a differentiated picture. Whereas debt relief of more than $40 billion constitutes an accomplishment for the program, the program's operational framework calls for more formal participation of the debtor country in the overall process and in the decision-making of the Executive Board. The development of substantive procedural requirements for the implementation of the program, comparable to those that exist for the World Bank's investment lending area, would constitute a proceduralimprovement in this respect.

Part IV offered a detailed account of the program's procedural deficits and its potential for improvements and also pointed out the program's weak statutory foundations. Debt relief was identified as one aspect of the Bank and Fund's wider poverty-related work based on a dynamic and evolutionary interpretation of their mandate to promote economic growth and prosperity. The Bank and Fund's activities in the area of development, poverty reduction and debt relief, are difficult to reconcile with the Bank and Fund's original mission or mandate as stated in their Articles of Agreement. However, with new d research developments onthe determinants of economic growth, those interpretative adaptationshave found broad acceptance.