The mechanism for providing debt relief to the world’s poorest countries is failing to produce results and requires a major rethink, a senior official at the World Bank has said.
Indermit Gill, the bank’s chief economist, said that after four years the G20’s common framework – designed to speed up and simplify debt restructuring – had not provided a single dollar of new money.
More than half the 75 countries deemed poor enough to be eligible for concessional finance from the World Bank are either in distress or close to it, and Gill said cripplingly high repayments were entrenching poverty.
Interviewed by the Guardian at the bank’s spring meetings in Washington, Gill said: “We have to recognise the problems. The common…
