Development Finance International
30 May, Financing the End of AIDS by 2030 in Africa
DFI has completed the final versions of two reports commissioned by UNAIDS on Financing the End of AIDS as a Public Health Threat in Africa by 2030, together covering the whole of Sub-Saharan Africa. Each report analyses the recent history of financing needs and sources, and finds major continuing financing gaps between amounts being spent and needs to end AIDS as a public health threat by 2030. It then looks at additional financing which would be mobilised to fight HIV and fund the other complementary key Sustainable Development Goals on education and health over the next 5 years, finding for example that up to US$97 billion a year could be mobilised from debt relief to fill the financing gap for these goals. The reports will be launched on 19 September and at various face-to-face events during the final quarter of 2024
29 January, Washington. TCD IMF Seminar on Integrating Climate Change into the LIC-DSF
The Task Force on Climate, Development and the IMF, hosted by the GDP Center of Boston University, organised a seminar on how to integrate climate change into the IMF/World Bank Low Income Countries’ Debt Sustainability Framework, which is due to be reviewed during 2024-25. Matthew Martin spoke on practical experiences of integrating climate change into the SRDSF for Market Accessing Countries, and implications for the LIC-DSF, as analysed in a forthcoming paper for Friedrich Ebert Stiftung New York and Jubilee USA. He emphasised that while the SRDSF integration has been a major step forward, there are some major problems with it, notably its application to too few countries, underestimation of potential adaptation and mitigation costs. Insufficient emphasis given to debt service crowding out climate spend, and its omission of the potential positive multiplier effects on growth and budget revenue of Just Green Transition spending. If these problems can be fixed it could be replicated in the LIC-DSF. The presentation is available on request from DFI.
11- December, Berlin. Expert Roundtable: Bringing All Creditors on Board
Major German CSOs held an expert roundtable meeting designed to work out how the German government could be more proactive in bringing all creditors on board to provide comprehensive debt relief – looking in particular at commercial creditors, multilateral creditors and Chinese institutions. For more details on the event, see here. Matthew Martin, Executive Director of DFI, spoke in a panel on how multilateral creditors had successfully provided multilateral debt relief under HIPC and MDRI without damaging their credit ratings, and could do so again without excessive costs to their lending streams or donor funds; and contributed ideas from the successful experiences of the UK government in introducing its “private creditor” vulture fund law in 2009-10, which is being replicated in New York and could be replicated across Europe. More details are available on request from DFI.
29 November - New Debt Service Watch briefing: The debt crisis is putting climate adaptation spending out of reach
Ahead of the COP28 Climate Summit in Dubai, DFI is today launching a new Debt Service Watch briefing which shows that in 2023, spending on debt service will be 12.5 times higher than spending on climate adaptation. In 2024, it will be 13.2 times higher.
Spending needs for climate adaptation in the Global South are up to US$340 billion a year. Yet just a fraction of this is currently being mobilised by domestic public budgets and donor flows. In 2021, just US$24.6 billion was provided in donor flows for climate adaptation, while 42 countries of the Global South reported just US$12.7 billion in domestic funds for climate adaptation. At the same time, debt service levels are at record highs. Broken down by region, in 25 Sub-Saharan African countries, debt service will consume 16 times as much as climate adaptation spending; in six small island developing states, nearly six times; in 4 Asian countries, 22 times; and in 4 Latin American and Caribbean countries, over four times as much.
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23 November, Oslo. Launch of Updated Report: Resolving the Worst Ever Global Debt Crisis
Norwegian Church Aid and SLUG organised a seminar to launch the updated version of the report first produced in 2022, arguing for a Nordic Initiative to resolve the worst ever global debt crisis. The report is especially timely given that Norway has been invited by Brazil to join the G20 as a Guest during 2024. The updated report shows the global debt crisis is continuing to get worse, especially if measured by the degree to which high debt service is stopping governments from funding crucial spending on education, health, social protection and climate. It makes 10 proposals to resolve the crisis, including basing debt relief on country spending needs for the SDGs by ensuring it reduces debt service to below 15% of budget revenue from year 1; making sure all private, multilateral and domestic creditors participate; introducing laws to protect countries against lawsuits by holdout creditors; maximising transparency and accountability of new lending and debt relief agreements; ending “predatory” new lending and debt restructuring by amending the UN Convention Against Corruption; accompanying debt relief with low-cost new finance, reducing costs of market borrowing by using MDB guarantees; and building a more comprehensive supporting debt architecture, led by the UN. The summary can be found here.
- 11 October – The Worst Debt Crisis Ever: Shocking New Debt Service Numbers
- 20 September, New York – Heads of Government Declaration on Reforming SDG10
- 28 July – DFI Commissioned by IBP/Gates to Analyse Accountability on Debt
- 11 July – Ouagadougou - DFI Report on Inequality in the Sahel Discussed at Inequality Forum
