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Specific provisions, which aim at facilitating the implementation of the Paris Club agreements, are generally included in Paris Club Agreed Minutes. These provisions include:
Comparability of treatment provision: Paris Club Agreed Minutes systematically include a provision. Under this provision, the debtor country commits itself to seek from non-multilateral creditors, notably other official bilateral creditor countries non member of the Paris Club and private creditors (mainly banks, bondholders and suppliers), a rescheduling in terms comparable to those negotiated within the Agreed Minute. Comparability of treatment is one of the 5 Paris Club principles. See Comparability of treatment for further details.
Debt swaps: These operations may be debt for nature, debt for aid, debt for equity swaps or other local currency debt swaps. These swaps often involve the sale of the debt by the creditor government to an investor who in turn sells the debt to the debtor government in return for shares in a local company or for local currency to be used in projects in the country. Paris Club creditors and debtors regularly conduct a reporting to the Paris Club Secretariat of the debt swaps conducted.
De minimis provision: Paris Club agreements define a "de minimis" level: when the claims of a Paris Club creditor covered by the rescheduling agreement are less than this level, this creditor participates to the meeting as observer and does not reschedule its claims. This rule aims at preventing debt treatments that do not have a significant impact in terms of debt relief and would be costly to implement.
Date of payment of non-consolidated amounts: when some categories of debts were not paid before the Paris Club negotiation and are not included in the consolidation under the Paris Club agreement, non-consolidated amounts are to be paid before a given date, defined in the agreement. In some cases, more than one date may be defined, depending on the different categories of credits considered.
Entry-into-force provision: Paris Club agreements may enter into force under certain conditions, typically payments on some categories of debts or implementation of IMF conditionality. Usually, an agreement with an entry-into-force provision requires a letter from the Chairman of the Paris Club to be implemented.
Free transferability: under this provision, the debtor country commits not to bock payments from debtors who are residents of its country to participating creditor countries.
Goodwill clause: in some Agreed Minutes, participating creditor countries may declare themselves ready to meet again with a debtor country for the treatment of its debt. Paris Club agreements generally do not include such a specific provision. A specific exception is the case of Cologne flow treatments, where creditors agree to meet again with the debtor country for a stock treatment at completion point, as provided for under the enhanced HIPC initiative.
Pullback provision: Paris Club agreements may be cancelled under certain conditions, if the debtor country that signed the agreement did not implement certain provisions of the Agreed Minute.
Special account: A special account may be defined in the Agreed Minute and used to receive the payments that are due to participating creditor countries.
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