June 19, 2020: Debt and investment transparency for better outcomes

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Since the COVID-19 outbreak, developing economies have suffered unprecedented capital outflows. To reverse these outflows and make debt and investment more productive, it is critical to embrace strong principles of debt and investment transparency.

Such transparency involves many difficult steps, but today we’re taking an important one: we are disclosing new information on the creditor country composition of projected annual debt service payments of all 73 countries eligible for relief under the Debt Service Suspension Initiative (DSSI).  

The World Bank Group has created a virtual one-stop for the latest information about DSSI. It highlights the potential savings for each eligible country—both in dollar terms and as a percentage of GDP. This allows visitors to look up more detailed country-by-country information from the World Bank Group’s Debtor Reporting System (DRS) database and provides useful links to related information such as DSSI Q&As and other key World Bank and G20 documents.

"I believe it is important to have detailed and timely public disclosure of debt service payments that may be deferred."

I believe it is important to have detailed and timely public disclosure of debt service payments that may be deferred. This will enable stakeholders—governments as well as the private sector and the public at large—to keep track of the progress being made in the implementation of DSSI while highlighting the growing importance of debt transparency. Today we are disclosing more disaggregated data in the DRS than in the past and in the future, we will be seeking support from borrowing countries on a mechanism to disclose even more granular information on debt payments.

This, of course, is only a start—and our goal is to increase the breadth and quality of debt data available here and elsewhere. Going forward, borrowing countries and creditors need to achieve sustained progress on five key principles to improve debt transparency and improve investment flows: 

  1. Spell out loan contract terms and payment schedules;
  2. Full disclosure of the stock of public and publicly guaranteed debt, SOE liabilities, and debt-like instruments;
  3. Enable borrowers to seek relief from excessive confidentiality clauses so they can proceed with more transparent data reporting;
  4. Promote effective and prudent use of collateral and liens in sovereign borrowing; and
  5. Insist that borrowers and lenders avoid violations of legal requirements of other creditors, such as negative pledge clauses.

The transparency of all government financial commitments and investments is a key step in creating an attractive investment climate and could make substantial progress this year to deliver better outcomes for people in developing countries. 

This post was originally published on LinkedIn

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Ikpangi Eseimokumo
September 10, 2021

How can young enterprises get an affordable loans to finance their investment? It is not all about the countries but the individuals that matter's because countries borrowed for their own political reasons but the individuals/ private sectors will invest their capital and boost the economy of every country so please we need a Link were private companies can apply for loans to start up their businesses

Catherine anida
September 10, 2021

Yes,covid has affected my business, I need lot of capital of my business.

Yell Cagoyong
September 10, 2021

Hoping this can be help to us. Especially those people who haven't nothing because of this pandemic

Yusuf yahaya
September 10, 2021

Since the COVID-19 outbreak, developing economies have suffered unprecedented capital outflows.

Mary Nolle garcia
September 10, 2021

The covid virus is very affected to all like me I'm only rented may house and may live in patner is no work no pay where we get the financial we need may sari sari store is close because that pandimic where we get food and everything we need help

Marvin barba almazan
September 10, 2021

The government here in the Philippines are very responsible to help for a Filipino people

Betty C Lintao
September 10, 2021

Is world bank able to give an equivalent cash relief to people who lost an amount of gain in business due to covid 19?

Bernard Ian Bronilla
September 10, 2021

Government agencies must help individual to start a new life by lending them money to start the new normal life.

Hassan Timbo
September 10, 2021

I thank you for the debt relief given to my country Sierra Leone and the new grant of $ 100,000,000 given to us about a month ago. This is one mechanism that will help develop Africa.

Hassan Timbo
September 10, 2021

Thanks for all you have done for my country Sierra Leone.

Edward Cuffy
September 10, 2021

This initiative is critical for the survivor of many private companies to save us from bad business practices of service providers.

iyanayana Kse
September 10, 2021

Many thanks, Your Excellency .
We recall the two major goals; help affecting extreme poverty, share the methods of struggling to remove poverty.
My country is making use of the support and please take my sincere thanks. We hope the support will not stop as we are working very hard to come out of the extreme poverty circle. Now we have a good leader who can take us through the journey and please support him. After some time, the WBG will harvest strong thanks and enormous appreciations by the world at large when they see us relieved from bad situation with the help of the Group.
May God bless you and your works.

Several thanks
IK