London - After crawling at a snail's pace for most of the past four years, the international effort to bring debt relief to the world's poorest countries broke into a gallop over the Christmas period.
The spur to the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) initiative was undoubtedly the highly public commitment by the Group of Seven industrialised countries to bring 20 countries into the process by the end of the year.
By Friday, when the World Bank held its last board meeting of the year, 22 countries had had their poverty reduction plans approved, qualifying them for interim debt relief of $35 billion.