Managing the LDC Debt Crisis
JEFFREY SACHS Harvard University Managing the LDC Debt Crisis THE DEBT CRISISof the developingcountries is now enteringits fifthyear. Since August 1982, when Mexico declared its inability to service its debts, more than forty developingcountries have experiencedcrises in external finance.1Several earlier Brookings studies analyzingthe debt crisis have focused on the origins of the crisis, the marketresponses to it, and the relationshipof the industrializednations' macroeconomic policies to the prospectsof the debtornationis.2 This paperhas a different focus: the managementof the debt crisis by the creditorgovernments, especially the United States. Lookingback at the past four years, one can discern a basic strategy on the partof the United States, Japan,and other creditorgovernments. For them, the debt crisis opened up the prospect of a major world financialcrisis. Withthe world'slargest commercial banks holding claims on the debtorcountries that typically exceed 100percent of bankcapital, 1. The WorldBank's study "Developmentand Debt Service:Dilemma of the 1980s," table 2, page xiv, in World Debt Tables: External Debt of Developing Countries, 1985-86 ed. (WorldBank, 1986),lists thirty-eightcountries that have engagedin multilateraldebt renegotiationsduring 1982-85. Several more countriesthat have entered IMF standby arrangementsbecause of debt-servicingdifficulties have not engagedin multilateraldebt renegotiations.The countriesin the WorldBank list areArgentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Central AfricanRepublic, Chile, Costa Rica, DominicanRepublic, Ecuador, Equatorial Guinea, Guyana, Honduras,Ivory Coast, Jamaica, Liberia, Madagascar,Malawi, Mauritania, Mexico, Morocco, Mozambique,Nicaragua, Niger, Nigeria, Panama,Peru, Philippines, Romania,Senegal, SierraLeone, Somalia,Sudan, Togo, Uganda,Uruguay, Venezuela, Yugoslavia,Zaire, Zambia. 2. See CarlosF. Diaz-Alejandro,"Some Aspects of the 1982-83 BrazilianPayments Crisis," BPEA,2:1983, pp.
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