LONDON: A group of prominent former emerging market finance chiefs is pressing global leaders to incorporate external shocks and climate change into debt sustainability calculations, according to a letter published on Wednesday.
The signatories, former central bankers and finance ministers mostly from emerging economies from India to Argentina, also called for debt relief to enable struggling emerging economies to meet climate investment targets.
“Every civilization faces what seems to be an impossible hurdle that threatens its existence,” Patrick Njoroge, former governor of Kenya’s central bank, said in the letter.
“We face such a moment, given the global debt crisis and the limited space for the required investments in climate action and the Sustainable Development Goals.”
The World Bank has warned that high borrowing costs and slowing growth have sparked a “silent debt crisis” that has thrown climate, health and education spending goals into question across the developing world.
The 21 signatories included Nigeria’s Lamido Sanusi, Colombia’s Jose Antonio Ocampo, Pakistan’s Reza Baqir, Argentina’s Martin Guzman and South Africa’s Tito Mboweni.
Zambia this week became the first poor nation to emerge from debt default under a rubric designed by the G20 dubbed the Common Framework.
But some have said the debt relief — estimated to have reduced Zambia’s debt by some $900 million and spread future payments over a much longer time frame — was insufficient.
The letter is asking for the Common Framework to give countries fair, comparable debt relief from all creditors, with the relief sufficient to allow countries to meet climate and investment spending needs.
The International Monetary Fund is also in the midst of a years-long revamp of the way it calculates debt sustainability analyzes — figures that form the baseline to determining how much debt relief lenders must give to defaulted countries.
These have been criticized in recent months and years by some investors and experts.
The Debt Relief for Green and Inclusive Recovery Project (DRGR), which organized the letter, released a study earlier this year that found emerging countries will pay a record $400 billion to service external debt in 2024.
It said 47 of them cannot spend the money they need for climate adaptation and sustainable development without risking default in the next five years.
“It is time for G20 leaders to spearhead comprehensive debt relief and mobilize new financing to uphold sustainable development and climate objectives,” Wednesday’s letter read.
Former central bankers from emerging countries, including Pakistan, call for debt reworks
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Former central bankers from emerging countries, including Pakistan, call for debt reworks
- Ex-emerging market finance chiefs press world leaders to incorporate external shocks into debt sustainability
- Twenty-one signatories to the letter include Pakistan’s former central bank chief Reza Baqir
Pakistan sets up crisis unit to facilitate citizens amid violent Iran protests
- Protests have taken place across Iran for 13 days in a movement sparked by anger over rising cost of living
- Over 50 protesters have been killed, while authorities imposed a ‘blanket Internet shutdown’ in the country
ISLAMABAD: Pakistan has established a crisis management unit to assist its nationals during violent protests in Iran, the Pakistani embassy said late Friday, after Iranians took to the streets in fresh protests.
Protests have taken place across Iran for 13 days in a movement sparked by anger over the rising cost of living that is now marked by calls for the end of the clerical system that has ruled Iran since the 1979 Islamic revolution which ousted the pro-Western shah.
Norway-based NGO Iran Human Rights, raising a previous toll of 45 issued the day earlier, said at least 51 protesters, including nine children, have been killed by security forces and hundreds more injured.
“The Embassy of Pakistan, Tehran has established a crisis management unit to facilitate its citizens,” the embassy said on X, sharing contact numbers for round-the-clock assistance.
It said Pakistani citizens in Iran could reach out to the following officials for any help needed during the protests: Farhan Ali at 00989107648298; Faizan at 00989906824496; and Kashif Ali at 00989938983309.
Pakistanis in Iran could also seek help by dialing in landline numbers: 00982166941388 and 00982166944888.
Friday’s protests followed giant demonstrations on Thursday that were the biggest in Iran since the 2022-2023 protest movement sparked by the custodial death of Mahsa Amini, who had been arrested for allegedly violating the dress rules for women.
The rallies came as Internet monitor NetBlocks said authorities imposed a “nationwide Internet shutdown” for the last 24 hours that was violating the rights of Iranians and “masking regime violence.”
Amnesty International said the “blanket Internet shutdown” aims to “hide the true extent of the grave human rights violations and crimes under international law they are carrying out to crush” the protests.
In his first comments on the escalating protests since January 3, Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on Friday called the demonstrators “vandals” and “saboteurs.”
“Everyone knows the Islamic republic came to power with the blood of hundreds of thousands of honorable people, it will not back down in the face of saboteurs,” Khamenei said in a speech broadcast on state TV.
Also on Friday, US President Donald Trump said it looked like Iran’s leaders were “in big trouble” and repeated an earlier threat of military strikes if peaceful protesters are killed.
“It looks to me that the people are taking over certain cities that nobody thought were really possible just a few weeks ago,” Trump said.
