By Andrea Shalal
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Officials from China, India, Saudi Arabia and the Group of Seven will take part in the first virtual session of a new sovereign debt roundtable on Friday The meeting, the IMF said on Monday, confirming an earlier Reuters report. The Common Framework – Ethiopia, Zambia and Ghana – as well as middle-income countries such as Sri Lanka, Suriname and Ecuador, are all facing their own debt crises, three sources said earlier.
The meeting will be co-chaired by IMF, World Bank and India, the current leader of the 25 bloc, than G finance officer It is scheduled to gather in Bangalore, India in February 25-25. The roundtable is expected to meet face-to-face in February 25 and is scheduled to officially launch at the IMF-World Bank Spring Meetings in April.
Brazil, one of the sources said that G 20 who will lead G20 next year will also join.
An IMF spokesman confirmed the first roundtable will be held on Friday and said more details would be announced in the near future.
“The objective is to bring together key stakeholders involved in sovereign debt restructuring, from traditional creditors in advanced economies to newer creditors such as China, Saudi Arabia, India, and private sector and creditor countries Address current deficiencies,” they said.
The roundtable will include Paris Club official creditors and private sector players – the Institute of International Finance (IIF), the International Capital Markets Institute and two of the sources, who asked not to be named. private sector financial institutions. First asked for help two years ago. Organizers said the roundtable could help resolve issues in principle and would not focus on Zambia or other individual cases.
Officials want to address China’s concerns over a deadline to shield new financing from debt restructuring by the end of the year, one of the sources said.
G7, IMF and World Bank officials have long pushed for a faster, broader effort to provide debt relief to heavily indebted countries to avoid cuts to social services, which they fear will cause social unrest.
U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and other G7 officials see China – now the world’s largest sovereign creditor – as a major obstacle to speeding up debt-processing efforts. They also pushed for an agreement among G members to expand the common framework to include middle-income countries.
Eric LeCompte, executive director of Jubilee America Network, a coalition of religious, development and advocacy groups, said support for the matter in other countries was growing. But he said opposition from China and Russia remained an important “stumbling block”.
income countries, but China is the biggest challenge,” LeCompte said, adding that Europe also experienced it in the 1990 years A similar period of reluctance to forgive debt was eventually reversed.
China has repeatedly called on the World Bank and other multilateral development banks to participate in debt relief — an offer firmly rejected by U.S. These banks have provided very favorable loans and grants to countries in crisis.
