A major grouping of creditor countries on Tuesday pushed for all of Haiti's public lenders to cancel the country's debts to help it recover from the massive damage of last week's earthquake.
"Given the financial needs Haiti will have to face for its reconstruction, the Paris Club creditors call on other bilateral creditors to cancel all of Haiti's debt," it said in a statement, expressing "deep compassion" for the victims.
The Paris Club has cited non-members Venezuela and Taiwan as two other big public lenders to the impoverished Caribbean nation and urged them to cancel its debts.
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Venezuela biggest lender
The International Monetary Fund told AFP that Haiti owed $US295 million ($A318.44 million) to Venezuela, its biggest bilateral lender, as of September 2009, and the second biggest was Taiwan, which was owed about $US90 million ($A97.15 million).
The Paris Club, an informal grouping of governments from rich countries that have made public loans to other states, last year agreed to cancel all the $US214 million ($A231.0 million) owed by Haiti to its members.
These countries include Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Japan and the United States.
The World Bank, a top development lender, and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) last summer approved $US1.2 billion ($A1.3 billion) of debt relief for Haiti which was already suffering from the effects of floods and high food prices.
In the wake of the quake, the two multilateral institutions announced $US100 million ($A107.94 million) of emergency financing each. The World Bank's president Robert Zoellick said it aimed to set up a long-term reconstruction fund.
Oxfam backs call
A French association of development aid charities, including Oxfam in France, seconded the call to forgive Haiti's debt but said emergency loans would compound the impoverished country's problems.
The group, the Debt and Development Platform, estimated the country's total debt at $US891 million ($A961.79 million).
The cancellation of Paris Club debt, agreed last year, "is too slow and too many conditions are holding back its implementation", the association said in a statement.
It demanded "that rich countries go further in demanding the cancellation of all Haiti's debt, immediately and without conditions."
"Haiti needs cash to deal with the emergency, but it should be donations," said Jean Merckaert of the Catholic development body CCFD-Terre Solidaire, one of the association's member groups, quoted in the statement.
"Lending to a poor country that has been completely destroyed is absurd."
