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First Published in 1990. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Third World Debt Strategy

United States. Congress. Senate. Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs. Subcommittee on International Finance and Monetary Policy

Published: 1990

Total Pages: 132


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The global economy has experienced four waves of rapid debt accumulation over the past 50 years. The first three debt waves ended with financial crises in many emerging market and developing economies. During the current wave, which started in 2010, the increase in debt in these economies has already been larger, faster, and broader-based than in the previous three waves. Current low interest rates mitigate some of the risks associated with high debt. However, emerging market and developing economies are also confronted by weak growth prospects, mounting vulnerabilities, and elevated global risks. A menu of policy options is available to reduce the likelihood that the current debt wave will end in crisis and, if crises do take place, will alleviate their impact.
This book exposes intolerable global double standards in the treatment of debtors and argues that fairness, economic efficiency and principles common to all civilized legal systems, must and can be applied to so-called 'developing countries', or Southern sovereign debtors.
In 2009, the Boards of the IMF and World Bank jointly endorsed a capacity building program to help developing countries strengthen their public debt management frameworks. A key aspect of the program was to help developing countries implement the framework developed by staffs to formulate an effective medium-term debt management strategy (MTDS). The Boards also supported the continued use of the complementary framework—the Debt Management Performance Assessment (DeMPA)—developed in 2007, to assess the effectiveness of the broader institutional arrangements for public debt management. This paper provides an update on the implementation of the program since its endorsement in 2009.
Several prominent MACs have sought to address the debt and external finance problem by generating large primary fiscal surpluses, switching to flexible exchange rates, and reforming fiscal and financial institutions. Such country-led initiatives completely dominate attempts to overhaul the international financial architecture or launch new lending instruments, which have so far met with little success. While the initial results of the countries' initiatives have been encouraging, serious questions remain about the viability of the model of market-based external development finance. Beyond crisis resolution, which has received attention in the form of the sovereign debt restructuring mechanism, the international financial institutions may need to ramp up their role as providers of stable long-run development finance to MACs instead of exiting from them."
Although it is commonly associated with the developing countries, debt crisis extends to Eastern Europe and major OECD economies. The Mexican Weekend in 1982 marked the transition of the debt crisis from a commercial crisis, to an economic and political one. This incident exposed the reality that there was no international mechanism for collecting debts from sovereign debtors. This paper is based on a conference at Wilton Park where delegates discussed the distinction between internal causes and external shocks, banks' attitudes to further lending and the roles played by the IMF and the World Bank.
This comprehensive study traces the evolution of the international debt crisis from its beginnings in the early 1970s to the present. The author uses a sample of 24 major borrower and heavily indebted countries to explore the economic forces within developing countries and the external conditions which led to the build-up of serious debt and their subsequent inability to carry it. He focuses attention on the changing roles of multilateral lending agencies such as the IMF and the World Bank and examines the role played by U.S., European, and Japanese commercial banks in creating conditions which led to unsustainable levels of debt among Third World borrowers. Finally, O'Cleireacain details the changing attitude of the U.S., from the early approaches of the Reagan administration through Brady Plan initiatives of the Bush administration. Scholars in development economics and international finance will find O'Cleireacain's work an important contribution to current debates over the causes of and policy responses to the mounting Third World debt crisis. In his discussion on the role of multilateral lending agencies, O'Cleireacain analyzes the lending policies of the IMF, the changing nature of IMF conditionality, and the relations between debtor countries and the IMF. By examining the appropriate role of private sector capital flows--which to some extent compete with lending flows available from the IMF and the World Bank--the author places the debt crisis in a wider international public policy context. He concludes that private lending by commercial banks is one of the fundamental causes of the crisis as borrowers have turned to them to avoid the watchdog role of the established multilateral lending agencies. Based on his extensive study of the sample countries, O'Cleireacain calls for the use of IMF and World Bank-endorsed development strategies which require external financing but use exports to generate the foreign exchange to service foreign debt. An appendix listing U.S. Treasury and Federal Reserve support operations for debtor nations, a bibliography, and an index complete the volume.