Baker Plan (debt relief)

For the Baker Plan for Western Sahara, see Baker Plan.

The Baker Plan was launched in October 1985 at the International Monetary Fund/World Bank meeting in Seoul, by James Baker, United States Secretary of the Treasury, as a way to combat the international debt crisis.

It was inspired by the idea that China's trade surplus could be used to relieve some of the Third World's problems with debt.^{[citation needed]} The Plan was designed to help highly indebted middle-income countries, i.e., those countries that are not incredibly poor but nevertheless owe a large amount of money. Fifteen countries were mentioned, and ten of those were in Central and Latin America.

The Baker Plan was succeeded by the Brady Plan.

References

• Buiter, W. and Srinivasan, T.N. (1987) "Rewarding the Profligate and Punishing the Prudent and Poor: Some Recent Proposals for Debt Relief", World Development Journal, Vol. 15, No. 3, pp411–417.
• Bogdanowicz-Bindert, C A, (1986) "The Debt Crisis: The Baker Plan Revisited", Journal of Interamerican Studies and World Affairs, Vol. 28, No. 3, pp. 33–45.
• Rudolph, Barbara, "Enter The Brady Plan", Time, 20 March 1989.
• Riding, Alan, "Baker's debt plan gets Latin scrutiny", New York Times, December 16, 1985.