Many developing countries are experiencing mounting external debt distress owing to the economic consequences of COVID-19. G20 Finance Ministers were swift to adopt the Debt Service Suspension Initiative (DSSI) in 2020, suspending bilateral debt payments through July 2021 for 73 low-income countries. Globally, Chinese governmentsponsored banks have emerged as the largest bilateral creditors (1). For the 46 participating DSSI countries thus far, payments due to China constitute 68% ($8.4 billion) of all official bilateral payments originally due by the end of 2020 (2). G20 countries have now come to realize that they will need to go beyond debt suspension to include the cancellation of some portion of debt. Without substantial debt relie…
Read the full article at: https://science.sciencemag.org/content/371/6528/468.full