WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Group of 20 finance officials expect to complete work on a common framework for dealing with the debt problems of the world’s poorest countries when they meet on Friday, with G20 leaders due to give their stamp of approval a week later.
Agreed in principle by G20 officials last month and endorsed by the Paris Club of official creditors, the framework will essentially extend the rules of the informal creditor group to include China, which accounted for 63% of overall debt owed to G20 countries in 2019, according to World Bank data.
“We expect to go ahead with the common framework, and it’s a very important step to have this creditor coordination at the G-20 level. The idea is that this will be finalised by the time of the leaders summit,” Ceyla Pazarbasioglu, director of the International Monetary Fund’s Strategy, Policy and Review Department (SPR), told Reuters in an interview.
She said the framework was important because it included China, and would help ensure comparability of treatment “much more forcefully” than the G20 freeze in official bilateral debt payments that runs through June 2021.
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