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Total Debt Service 1990

Map No. 355

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‘Debt service’ is the term for paying off one’s debts. The debt repayments shown here are publicly guaranteed long term debts and credits from the International Monetary Fund. Money is lent directly between territories (bilaterally) or via international organisations (multilaterally). The payments shown here include interest that is being paid, as well as the cost of paying off the original loan.

The debt payments of Southeastern Africa, Northern Africa, Southern Asia and South America were more than a quarter of the earnings made from the export of goods and services from those regions. These statistics inspired the formation of the Jubilee 2000 Campaign in the 1990s.

"Since the average citizen of a low-income debtor country earns less than one fiftieth of the average citizen of a high-income creditor country, this process is like trying to extract blood from a stone." Susan George, 1993

Territory size shows the proportion of all payments for public debt that were paid by that territory, in 1990.

• Open PDF poster, designed for printing. You need Acrobat Reader.
• View labelled territory map or population map for comparison
• Data files: Excel (large with map), Excel (small no map), Opendoc format (see notes)
• Technical notes for this data.
• High Resolution image (see copyright conditions)
• All of the data we use is estimated; see data page