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The Evolving Nature of Developing Country Debt and Solutions for Change by Bodo Ellmers • July 2016

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The Evolving Nature of Developing Country Debt and Solutions for Change by Bodo Ellmers • July 2016 The evolving nature of developing country debt and solutions for change By Bodo Ellmers • July 2016 A Eurodad discussion paper 1 Contents Executive summary 3 Introduction 4 Part 1: The evolving nature of developing country debt 5 Chapter 1: Debt is on the rise again 5 Chapter 2: The risk of new debt crises 7 Chapter 3: New debt crises will be different from the last ones 8 Chapter 4: Implications for debt crisis management 12 Chapter 5: The new landscape makes debt crisis prevention and resolution even more difficult 16 Part 2: Ending debt crises: Towards effective prevention and resolution 17 Chapter 6: Putting people first: Ensuring the primacy of human rights over debt service 18 Chapter 7: Preventing debt crises: Promoting responsible lending and borrowing 21 Chapter 8: Resolving debt crises: An international debt workout mechanism 24 Conclusion 30 References 31 With financial support from: Executive summary This Eurodad discussion paper is being published at a time Some lenders introduced safeguards to prevent harm when the impacts of the last global financial crisis that – examples include the World Bank’s safeguards or the started almost ten years ago are still being felt in many International Monetary Fund (IMF)’s debt sustainability countries. At the same time, a new debt crisis triggered framework. However, these lenders are providing a by falling commodity prices and volatile capital flows has decreasing share of finance. The main institution for debt already hit some countries in the developing world. crises resolution today is the Western bilateral official creditors’ Paris Club, but this type of debt represents a The debt burden of developing countries has reached the decreasing share of total debt, and of the total contemporary highest level ever seen. When the Millennium Development debt problems too. Goals (MDGs) were adopted in 2000, developing countries faced the challenge of financing the implementation of An increasing share of credit is not covered by any these goals while carrying a US$1.4 trillion external debt effective form of regulation. It falls into a regulation gap. burden. Now that the much more comprehensive and The debt landscape has changed substantially while costly Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) have been the modernisation of institutions to prevent and resolve adopted, their financing competes with a debt burden owed debt crises has not kept up. The increasing number of by public and private debtors combined that has tripled to creditors representing different types of debt means that US$5.4 trillion. Debt service on this stock costs developing a coordinated and comprehensive solution to debt crises countries US$575 billion annually. becomes ever more difficult. Most economies have grown substantially over the past 15 The evolving nature of debt requires up-to-date solutions years, so the debt burden has decreased when measured for a development effective debt regime and for debt crisis as a share of national income or export revenue. This is in prevention and resolution that must be able to reach the part due to debt relief initiatives that were put in place in the whole debt stock: public as well as private debt, external as early years of MDG implementation, but no longer exist to well as domestic debt. The good news is: this is not news. back the SDG implementation. While relative debt burdens Substantial conceptual work has already been done on what decreased between 2000 and 2010, these trends have a development effective debt regime for the 21st century reversed in 2011. Since then debt is on an upward path, also could look like. Three regime-building processes on an when measured in relative terms. international level stand out: Most striking is the change in debt composition and debt • To increase the development effectiveness of loans and instruments being used. Public debt in developing countries to safeguard people and development from the damage is increasingly being borrowed from private lenders. This that debt can do; the United Nations (UN) Human Rights has marginalised official lenders, especially the bilateral Council has adopted the Guiding Principles on Debt and lenders whose share halved from 33% of the debt stock to Human Rights. 16% now. And private lenders have changed too: Bonds have replaced loans as a predominant form of private lending. At • To increase the development effectiveness of loans and the same time, the share of bonds doubled from 21% to 42% to prevent debt crises, the UN Conference on Trade and of the debt stock. Since 2004, 23 new countries have started Development (UNCTAD) has designed the Principles to issue bonds on financial markets. Domestic lending and on Promoting Responsible Lending and Borrowing, borrowing is on the rise too, as is the provision of loans by building on previous concepts developed by civil society new official creditors from emerging economies. organisations including Eurodad. The evolving nature of debt implies that the new debt crises • To resolve debt crises in a fair, speedy and sustainable will be different from the last. A plethora of dispersed manner, several attempts have been made at both bondholders and investors have now started to lend to the IMF and the UN to create an insolvency regime countries that could previously only receive credit from a for sovereign debtors. In other terms, a debt workout handful of official and private banks. The old debt regime mechanism for states. that the 2030 development agenda inherited has never been What mainly remains to be done is to overcome political fully able put loans to work for development, to prevent debt deadlocks and put these proposals into practice. Regime- crises, or to resolve them in a fair, speedy and sustainable building is a cumbersome process. Depending on the manner. The bad news is: the situation is getting worse. political opportunities, innovations can happen either in In an era when debt came predominantly from official the form of big bangs or in incremental steps, through creditors, there were some institutions that were developed international agreement or innovations at a national level specifically to deal with this issue, even though they were that trickle up to the international level. In all of these cases, very slow, dominated by creditors and, as a result, created a citizen action will have a key role to play. lot of harm along the way. 3 Introduction This Eurodad discussion paper analyses the evolving Of course, one fundamental solution would be if nature of developing country debt and solutions for change. governments and developing countries did not need to The aim is to identify relevant reform processes on an borrow at all to finance necessary expenses, but had international level, and more practically to keep progressive sufficient revenues to avoid creating debt in the first place. actors that want to drive change informed about existing This might include tax and tariff revenue, for example, or opportunities. export revenue, the allocation of special drawing rights by the IMF, and development assistance grants. However, The timeframe we will look at begins with the year 2000, tax collection remains challenging in absence of effective when the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) were institutions that could curb tax evasion and harmful tax adopted, to the present day as the international community competition. Richer countries continue to fail to meet the takes on the challenge to implement the Sustainable target of providing 0.7% of their Gross National Income Development Goals (SDGs). Understanding debt problems, (GNI) as development assistance, the IMF’s mandate to so that debt crises can be prevented or at least resolved in a issue Special Drawing Rights (SDRs) is restricted, and speedy and effective manner, is crucial in terms of achieving export revenue is highly fragile and vulnerable to shocks. development goals. Borrowing and lending acts and the debt that these create Unresolved debt crises have caused lost decades for are therefore here to stay. This report avoids addressing development for many developing regions in the 1980s and larger public finance issues. It focuses instead on the debt 1990s. MDG implementation made progress primarily in regime: solutions to improving lending and borrowing countries that had no significant debt problems in the early policies, and to preventing and resolving debt crises. 2000s, such as China. That is why resolving debt problems The new debt landscape requires new solutions, and through debt relief initiatives such as those for the Heavily such solutions need to reach the whole debt stock. This Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) and Multilateral Debt Relief discussion paper presents a number of key solutions in Initiative (MDRI) became a key pillar of the MDG framework. three central areas: The SDG implementation cannot afford a lost decade for development, so effective institutions for debt crises • First, to make loans development effective. This is key, prevention and resolution must be a central pillar of their as debt-creating forms of finance remain a relevant form means of implementation. of development finance besides tax revenue or official development assistance (ODA) grants. We distinguish between two different types of debt crisis. The first type of crisis is related to the risks of actual • Second, solutions to preventing debt crises through defaults – the risk that indebted countries cannot sustain more responsible lending and borrowing. debt service. This follows the narrow definition that the IMF • Third, solutions to resolve debt crises in a fair, speedy uses when talking about debt distress. The second type is and sustainable manner. the crisis of public and development spending that is caused by rising debt service costs that are being sustained despite We are aware that the solutions we present are not the development damage involved. Each Euro spent on debt exhaustive.
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