As a contribution to greater debt transparency, the Paris Club releases comprehensive data on its claims

For the first time since its inception more than 50 years ago, the Paris Club has decided to publish the amount of its claims on foreign countries.

This move is intended to enhance transparency on debt data and to encourage all creditors, in particular major developing countries' creditors, to engage in a comprehensive debt reporting and disclosure process.

Information sharing is indeed at the heart of any cooperative approach to assess risks of debt distress in a reliable manner and to effectively solve debt problems in developing countries.

The initiative was announced as part of theParis Club contribution to the Doha Conference on Financing for Developmentthat was sent to the United Nations and posted on the Paris Club website mid-September.

The table published on the Paris Club website shows the total amount of claims held by Paris Club members on each debtor country, with a split between Official Development Assistance (ODA) claims and non-Official Development Assistance claims.

The total of Paris Club claims, excluding late interest, amounts to USD 330.2 billion, of which USD 172.5 billion are ODA claims and USD 157.7 billion are non-Official Development Assistance claims.

Around 10% of these claims (roughly USD 31 billion) are owed by heavily indebted poor countries. The Paris Club intends to cancel most of these claims on countries that implement poverty-reducing and other economic reforms under the enhanced Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) Initiative and through additional bilateral debt relief efforts.

Nearly one third of the Paris Club claims (around 100 billion USD) is held on emerging market countries from Asia, Africa and South America that are members of the G20.