Mali – a poor, landlocked country in West Africa – became the seventh Heavily Indebted Poor Country (HIPC) to reach ‘Completion Point’ under the World Bank and IMF’s enhanced HIPC initiative on March 7. Mali had already received some debt cancellation under HIPC. Mali is the first country for almost a year to receive any write-off of debt under the HIPC initiative, which campaigners have criticised for failing to keep to the schedules promised to the international Jubilee 2000 campaign.