Third World Debt

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 2019, the World Bank (WB) and the IMF will be 75 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 (...)
South Asia: New creditors and new forms of debt peonage

17 April 2018 - by Nathan Legrand

The seventh CADTM South Asia regional workshop was successfully held in Colombo (Sri Lanka) from April 6 to April 8, 2018, with participants from Sri Lanka, but also from India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, as well as from Japan, France and Belgium (for the CADTM International Secretariat). (...)
Is Pakistan falling into China’s debt trap?

16 April 2018 - by Abdul Khaliq

• Pakistan will have to payback $100 billion to China by 2024 of total investment of $18.5 billion, which China has invested on account of bank loans in 19 early harvest projects, under CPEC. • China has become the biggest lender to Pakistan after surpassing Japan. Pakistan owes $19 billion (1/5 (...)
Mozambique forced to restructure after debt default

27 March 2018 - by Abayomi Azikiwe

Economic growth proves unsustainable for the Southern African state of Mozambique in present world situation due to financial implications that have been going on for some time now. Since 2014 many energy producing emerging states in Africa and worldwide have fallen into recession resulting (...)
The Central Bank of Uganda Comes Clean About Looming Debt Distress

26 March 2018 - by Mary Serumaga

Uganda has finally admitted that there is an increasing likelihood that the country will default on its debt obligations. The (Central) Bank of Uganda issued the warning in the first quarterly State of the Economy Report of 2018. The public external debt has trebled in the last three years. (...)
Developing country debt payments increase by 60% in three years

22 March 2018 - by Jubilee Debt Campaign

Figures released today by the Jubilee Debt Campaign, based on IMF and World Bank databases, show that developing country debt payments increased by 60% between 2014 and 2017. They are now at the highest level since 2004. Government external debt payments reach highest level since 2004 (...)
The Fate of the Revolution

22 February 2018 - by Nathan Legrand

Tunisia’s ruling class is pursuing the same economic policies as the authoritarian regime it replaced. In the first half of January, a wave of protests spread across Tunisia. Most observers say that the new finance law, implemented at the beginning of the year, sparked them. Indeed, these (...)