The Highly Indebted Poor Costumiers (HIPC) initiative mainly by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund has two features which distinguish it from earlier attempts to deal with the external debt problem of developing countries. First, unlike earlier strategies which resorted to dealing with bilateral or multilateral debt the HIPC initiative attempts to deal with the total debt. Secondly, it recognizes that the existence of poverty is a constraint to servicing debt. This paper analyses the HIPC initiative in the context of Tanzania, a poor debt stressed and developing country and attempts to examine the country's indebtedness stance beyond the (HIPC) initiative