The World Bank’s top economist called on private lenders to shoulder some of the cost of debt forgiveness for the poorest countries, as record high repayments drain budgets that should be focused on health, education and infrastructure.
Interest payments alone by the lowest-income nations ballooned to a record $34.6 billion in 2023, quadrupling over the past decade, the bank said in its latest International Debt Report. Including principal, those 78 nations are paying $96.2 billion annually to service $1.1 trillion in debt.
More alarming, according to Chief Economist Indermit Gill, is that private lenders have pulled almost $13 billion more in service payments from those countries than they injected in new financing over the last two…
