By Andrea Shalal
NEW YORK (Reuters) – International Monetary Fund Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva said on Thursday that she will Travel to Beijing with heads of other international agencies to discuss China’s economic development, COVID- and national leadership’s policy on debt relief.
“For the first time, hopefully we can sit together and discuss very pressing issues facing China and the world,” Georgieva told the Reuters NEXT conference.
Georgieva said that during the Beijing meeting she intended to discuss how to speed up China’s participation in debt relief to poor and developing countries as the world’s largest official bilateral creditor.
“I very much hope that, when we have the opportunity to discuss these issues next week, we will continue to find better solutions and strengthen the delivery of the common framework,” she said, referring to the G 20 Common debt restructuring framework that countries are slowly starting.
She expressed the hope that China, out of “enlightened self-interest”, will work to prevent developing countries from deepening and spreading their debt problems into a global debt crisis, which will cause pain for borrowing countries, but also It will have a negative impact on the economy and affect creditor countries, especially China.
Georgieva also said that China’s COVID- restrictions and turmoil in its huge real estate sector brought China’s expected growth rate back to 3.2 next year % – just slightly above the global average, a phenomenon not seen in the past 40 years.
“We have been relying on China for a significant increase in global growth,” Georgieva said. “Some 35% to 40% of global growth used to come from growth in China, that’s not the case now, and it won’t be the case next year,” Georgieva said.
To watch a live broadcast of the Reuters NEXT conference on December 1, click here.
