Committee for the Abolition of Illegitimate Debt

The seventh CADTM South Asia regional workshop was successfully held in Colombo (Sri Lanka) from April 6 to April 8, 2018, with participants coming from Sri Lanka, India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, Japan, Belgium and France. Around forty delegates, most of them being representatives of social movements (peasants’ movements, feminism, trade unionism, etc.), came together for this three-day long programme. Different topics were discussed during the meeting, such as the public debt policies of Sri Lanka, the Chinese loans and investments in South Asia as well as other predatory bilateral agreements in the region, the big corporations’ debt, the individuals’ private debts such as the student debts in Japan and, in particular, the microfinance loans to poor people in Sri Lanka and in the region, with their devastating effects.