Third World Debt

COVID-19 and debt in the global south: Protecting the most vulnerable in times of crisis II

2 April 2020 - by Daniel Munevar

This is the second part of a blog series covering the impact of COVID-19 on vulnerable countries in the Global South. [Part 1] analyses the impact of debt burdens on health services. Part 2 discusses how the economic crisis will affect countires in the global south. Part 3 highlights the degree (...)
A debt moratorium for Low Income Economies

27 March 2020 - by Eurodad, Daniel Munevar

Eurodad cost assessment of a debt moratorium to tackle the COVID-19 crisis This briefing provides an assessment of the costs and implications of an immediate debt moratorium for 69 countries classified as Lower Income Economies. A moratorium on public external debt service could free up to (...)
COVID-19 and debt in the global south: Protecting the most vulnerable in times of crisis I

18 March 2020 - by Daniel Munevar

This is the first part of a blog series covering the impact of COVID-19 on vulnerable countries in the global south. Part 1 analyses the impact of debt burdens on health services. Part 2 discusses the channels different channels of economic transmission of the crisis. Part 3 highlights the (...)
Only a citizen’s audit of SGR debt will unravel public heist of resources

29 February 2020 - by David Calleb Otieno

Early this week, Kenyans woke up to blockbuster like stories of how prices of items and commodities related to the Kenyan Standard Gauge Rail (SGR) project were extremely inflated perhaps explaining why the Kenyan SGR is far much more expensive than the Tanzania SGR. According to the Daily (...)
Colombo declaration on illegitimate debt

27 February 2020 - by CADTM

We, the participants of the 8th CADTM South Asia meeting from Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, as well as from Morocco, Belgium and France assembled at Colombo, Sri Lanka from 18-19 February 2020 resolve to fight against illegitimate debt which is a mechanism to transfer wealth created (...)
Out of service: How public services and human rights are being threatened by the growing debt crisis

25 February 2020 - by Iolanda Fresnillo, Eurodad

Public services play a critical role in advancing human rights and fighting inequality. However, growing levels of external public debt, especially in the global south, threaten the very services on which citizens depend in order to have even a basic standard of living. External debt levels (...)
Debt Against the People: an ABC

29 January 2020 - by Eric Toussaint

Introduction Over the last ten years Greece has been a prime example of how a country and a people can be deprived of their liberty through clearly illegitimate debt. Since the 19th century, from Latin America to China, Haiti, Greece, Tunisia, Egypt and the Ottoman Empire public debt has been (...)
Poor countries cut public spending, debt payments trebled

17 January 2020 - by Jubilee Debt Campaign

Figures calculated by Jubilee Debt Campaign from IMF and World Bank data show that growing debt burdens are contributing to public spending cuts. For the 15 countries spending over 18% of revenue on debt payments, 14 saw public spending cuts between 2015 and 2019. Average external government (...)
“Any Third World government which takes the decision to carry on refunding the external debt is opting for the road to ruin”

13 January 2020 - by Eric Toussaint, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva

“Any Third World government which takes the decision to carry on refunding the external debt is opting for the road to ruin.” These were the words in 1991 of Luis Inacio “Lula” da Silva, at that time, president of the Brazilian PT, (Partido dos Trabalhadores – Workers’ party). Interview by Eric (...)
New debt crisis in the South

18 December 2019 - by Milan Rivié

Public external debt in countries of the South [1] is a source of concern, notably because of its dramatic increase within the last two decades and because of parallels with the pre-crisis debt situation of Third World countries in the 1980s. Beyond the similarities, the widespread use of bond (...)
Southern Africa losing US$30 billion annually in trade-related illicit outflows, external government debt payments

2 September 2019 - by Sunit Bagree, ACTSA

According to a new report, The Money Drain: How Trade Misinvoicing and Unjust Debt Undermine Economic and Social Rights in Southern Africa, launched today by ACTSA on the eve of the SADC Summit in Dar es Salaam, rich countries may be accused of neo-colonialism if they fail to assist SADC (...)
The debt trap

8 July 2019 - by Eric Toussaint

In 2020, the World Bank (WB) and the IMF will be 76 years old. These two international financial institutions (IFI), founded in 1944, are dominated by the USA and a few allied major powers who work to generalize policies that run counter the interests of the world’s populations. The WB and the (...)
Philippines: The Marcos debt

5 November 2018 - by Eduardo C. Tadem

Another compelling argument against the “hero’s burial” for Ferdinand Marcos was his corruption-ridden mismanagement of the country’s debt. At the height of martial law in 1977, he issued Presidential Decree 1177 mandating the automatic appropriation for debt service, thus starting the process that (...)
Summary of The Debt System A History of Sovereign Debts and their Repudiation

10 October 2018 - by Víctor Manuel Isidro Luna

The book The Debt System. A History of Sovereign Debts and their Repudiation will be published later in 2018 by Haymarket in Chicago https://www.haymarketbooks.org/books/1234-the-debt-system . The original French edition has been published in novembre 2017 in Paris (...)
A critical look at China’s One Belt, One Road initiative

10 October 2018 - by Martin Hart-Landsberg

China’s growth rate remains impressive, even if on the decline. The country’s continuing economic gains owe much to the Chinese state’s (1) still considerable ability to direct the activity of critical economic enterprises and sectors such as finance, (2) commitment to policies of economic (...)
Proposed Solutions by the Dialogue Reference Group on Ballooning Kenyan Debts are False and Flawed

25 September 2018 - by David Calleb Otieno

The Kenyan Peasants League (KPL), a member of La Via Campesina and part of the Kenyan Social Movements for the Abolition of Illegitimate Debts has been following closely the just concluded Dialogue Reference Group meeting that brought together a section of religious leaders and Kenyan civil (...)
Submission to the Independent Expert on foreign debt and human rights By Civil society organizations in Sri Lanka

12 September 2018 - by Collective

This submission to the Independent Expert on Foreign Debt and Human Rights comes at an important juncture in the trajectory of Sri Lanka’s socio-political and economic development. In 2015 the country took a definitive turn after the presidential election, which had led to the election of a new (...)
China to take over Zambian international Airport for debt repayment default; neocolonialism?

11 September 2018 - by Richard Krah

Signing a contract with China is like, ascribing to the boiling frog effect; a fable describing a frog being boiled alive slowly. If you drop a frog suddenly into boiling water, it will jump out, but if you put that same frog in a vessel of water and start heating the water gradually, it will (...)
Sri Lanka: Debt Trap and Mega Development

14 August 2018 - by Ahilan Kadirgamar

Sri Lanka’s foreign debt is again talk of the town. Is the country overly indebted to China? Are we borrowing too much from international capital markets? Or are we financing ourselves into trouble with multi-lateral agencies like the International Monetary Fund (IMF), World Bank (WB) and Asian (...)
The method in the madness: Uganda’s budget 2018 is divorced from reality

19 June 2018 - by Mary Serumaga

The report of the Auditor General (AG) for 2016–2017 is another catalogue of systemic theft, embezzlement and wastage of public goods. In this, it is similar to audit reports going back at least two decades. It appears that incompetence as much as theft are responsible for the seeming inadequacy (...)
Armenia’s unfinished revolution

25 May 2018 - by Armen Abagyan

Bells of triumph are ringing in the streets of Yerevan following the deposition of now-former Prime Minister Serzh Sargsyan. Ding-dong, the wicked witch is dead. The spectre of totalitarian rule and unbridled corruption enervating the already impoverished Armenian people is no more. Such is the (...)
The Egyptian Network for the Abolition of Debt and the Right to Equitable Development (ENADED)

8 May 2018 - by CADTM, ENADED

Today, as capitalism has an increasing tendency to globalize all aspects of human life, our struggle must be globalized too. It is essential to develop networking strategies with other organizations of the same spheres of struggles. Capitalism has led to more and more significant forms of (...)
UNCTAD: Debt warning lights flash for poorest countries, experts say

7 May 2018 - by UNCTAD

Top economists from UNCTAD and the International Monetary Fund agree it’s time to sound the alarm on rising public debt in many low-income countries but disagree on how loudly the bell should be rung. Mounting public debt in some of the world’s poorest countries has leading economists worried. (...)
‘Sooner or later, there will be a new financial crisis’

18 April 2018 - by Eric Toussaint, Meera Srinivasan

Regulators, governments to blame, says Eric Toussaint of the Committee for the Abolition of Illegitimate Debt. The recent bubbles in the stock exchanges and financial markets foretell an imminent financial crisis that would likely be stronger and more dangerous than in the past, according to (...)
Colombo Declaration on Illegitimate Debts 7^th CADTM South Asia Workshop

17 April 2018 - by CADTM

We, the participants of the 7th CADTM South Asia workshop from Bangladesh, Nepal, India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Japan as well as from Belgium and France gathered at Colombo, Sri Lanka from 6-8 April 2018 acknowledge and affirm that illegitimate debt is a mechanism used to transfer wealth created (...)