IMF to meet with China, India, Paris Club on debt relief on February 17

The International Monetary Fund, World Bank and India will host an inaugural meeting to deal with global debt issues Friday, bringing together creditors including China with borrowing countries to try to hash out solutions for nations with unsustainable debt levels.

Borrowing nations participating will include Ghana, Ethiopia and Zambia, according to people familiar with the plans for the so-called sovereign debt roundtable, who asked not to be identified discussing private talks.

Creditors including France, the US, UK and Japan will participate, as well as the Institute of International Finance, the global association for the financial industry and private sector creditors, the people said. One of them added that envoys from Sri Lanka, Ecuador, and Suriname will also be present.

The meeting aims to address the current shortcomings in debt restructuring, an IMF spokesman said, confirming that it’s taking place virtually on Friday, but not identifying the countries involved. The World Bank and US Treasury Department declined to comment.

Another Path

The Paris Club of mostly western traditional creditor nations joined China, India and Saudi Arabia in 2020 under the auspices of the Group of 20 biggest economies forum to agree to a roadmap — known as the Common Framework — to restructure struggling countries’ debt on a case-by-case basis.

The process has been plagued by delays and only applies to low-income nations, leaving policymakers looking for another path to provide relief or restructuring for both poor and middle-income countries facing hundreds of billions of dollars in debt coming due.

The gathering will also focus on ensuring comparability of treatment between official and private creditors, and dealing with resolving technical and legal issues, one of the people said.

China — now the largest bilateral creditor to developing nations — has insisted in several debt-restructuring cases that multilateral development banks like the World Bank accept losses, something the institution and the US have rejected as unfeasible under its operating model.

The meeting comes before a gathering of Group of 20 finance ministers and central bankers next week in Bangalore, India, where Kristalina Georgieva, the head of the IMF, and US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen had previously said that the roundtable would meet.

While some G-20 members will discuss the debt-relief issue on the sidelines of that meeting, it won’t include all the roundtable participants since borrowing countries won’t be present, the people familiar with the plans said.