Severely Indebted Countries

This article or the following section is not adequately provided with supporting documents ( e.g. individual evidence ). Information without sufficient evidence could be removed soon. Please help Wikipedia by researching the information and including good evidence.

Heavily indebted countries (English Severely indebted countries , abbreviated to SIC) refers to a category of countries that was introduced by the World Bank in 1994 as a supplement to its list of countries based on gross national product . The heavily indebted middle income countries (English Severely indebted middle income countries , abbreviated SIMIC) and the heavily indebted countries with low income (English Severely indebted low income countries , abbreviated SILIC) were also introduced as sub-categories.

The criterion for the inclusion of a country in the category of heavily indebted countries is that three of the following four debt ratios exceed their fixed limit:

• Foreign debt to GNP : 50%
• Interest paid to export earnings : 20%
• Debt service to export earnings : 30%
• Foreign debt to export earnings : 275%

The category should not be confused with the category of heavily indebted poor countries ( HIPC for short), which was considered as part of a debt relief initiative of the G8 countries (see Heavily indebted developing countries ).