• one of the major conditions, which has made their external debt unsustainable and, hence, given rise to the protracted debt crisis over the last two decades, is their extreme susceptibility to large-scale external shocks such as the terms of trade effects. Past and existing debt relief mechanisms, including the HIPC initiatives, have failed to pay sufficient attention to this condition
• instead, official creditors have kept applying ex-post debt relief mechanisms in response to recurrent liquidity crises and the ensued debilitating 'debt overhang' condition, with firm belief that Structural Adjustment Programmes attached as policy conditionality would bring about structural transformation of these economies required to overcome this condition
• the existing contingency financing facilities at IMF are not much help to HIPCs. Apart from the fact that high conditionality has been historically applied to these facilities, CCL is not available to a country which uses any other facility such as PRGF, while CCF is provided on non-concessional terms, hence too expensive for utilisation
• it is critically important to establish genuinely flexible, state-contingent debt relief mechanisms in order to avoid the recurrence of debt crisis, which has stalled economic development of low-income countries for so long. Drawing an efficient, state contingent debt contract is within our technical capability. What is lacking now is the political will and commitment to realise this possibility

[Adapted from the author]