This was the first common policy document produced by the consortium project 'Restructuring Public Debt for socioeconomic recovery and Sustainability in Africa and Latin America' and submitted to the T20 was selected and published in 2022. This policy brief, titled “Policy proposals for external debt management and sustainability in developing and low-income countries”. This PB was co-produced and presented to the T20/TF7 on the subtheme International Finance and Economic Recovery. This initiative is framed within the United Nations’ Global Crisis Response Group on Food, Energy and Finance within the UN Secretariat calling for an urgent action by the G20 and international financial institutions to increase liquidity and fiscal space so that governments can provide safety nets for the poorest and most vulnerable.
Co-authored by all research project institutions:
Africa
Nigeria: Centre for the Study of the Economies of Africa (CSEA)
Uganda: Economic Policy Research Centre (EPRC)
Ethiopia: Institute of Development Policy Research (IDPR) and the Department of Economics of the Addis Ababa University (AAU).
Latin America
Bolivia: Fundación ARU
Paraguay: Centro de Análisis y Difusión de la Economía Paraguaya (CADEP)
Honduras: Sergio Sánchez and Gerson Urtecho, independent researchers
This Think20 (T20) policy brief describes the pitfalls in current approaches to debt restructuring for assessing sustainability in low and lower-middle income countries, proposes a reframing of debt sustainability analysis to take into account social and environmental sustainability and provides concrete examples of initiatives based on the experiences and challenges of the developing world.