By Nadia Khan, Communications Associate
Why is China being blamed for the stalled G20 debt relief plan for distressed countries?
Yahoo Finance and South China Morning Post quoted Eric LeCompte on China, debt relief and the G20. Read the full article here.
Eric LeCompte, Jubilee USA's executive director and a United Nations finance expert, who has monitored G20 and G7 meetings since 2010, said the debt discussion was one of the most difficult conversations at the G20 meeting.
"Developing countries struggled with a lack of resources before the pandemic hit. Now they struggle with low revenues and rising debts. Without debt relief, we will see a wave of defaults and countries will run out of money to pay their creditors," LeCompte said.
He said the promise of the G20's Common Framework was that it could bring together all creditors, including China and the private sector, under one umbrella. Unfortunately, the private sector was refusing to cooperate, and China was slowing the process down, LeCompte said.
"It appears China wants to cut its own debt deals before the Common Framework process is more fully implemented. This means that the G20 is still lacking consensus to move forward their debt reduction process in a robust and quick way," he said.
"It will probably take more defaults and increased crises, when developing countries run out of money to pay debts, for world leaders to move more rapidly."
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