G20 Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors approved, on 13 November, the ‘Common Framework for Debt Treatments beyond the Debt Service Suspension Initiative (DSSI)’ to help poor countries severely affected by the Covid-19 crisis.
The common framework, endorsed at a meeting under the Saudi Arabian presidency of the G20, allows 73 eligible countries to suspend debt service payments to their official bilateral creditors in the G20/Paris Club until the end of 2020, and possibly beyond June 2021 if the economic and financial situation so requires.
“This is a major achievement in the international debt architecture to strengthen coordination among official bilateral creditors”, the Paris Club said in a statement the same day. And to insist on the fact that “the members of the Paris Club recognise that the Covid-19 health and economic crisis considerably increases the vulnerability to debt of the poorest and most vulnerable countries”.
In the European Parliament, the S&D group coordinator on the Committee on Development, Udo Bulmann (Germany), welcomed the move. “The EU and our Member States have made a strategic contribution to the development of the DSSI, which has made $5 billion immediately available to 46 countries for health, economic and social spending in response to the pandemic”, he said in a statement issued on 15 November.
Advocating for further debate and action, he added: “We need a concrete strategy that includes short and long-term actions. The crisis situation is heterogenic and requires practical solutions. If we do not act now, we jeopardise the Sustainable Development Goals and the Paris Agreement on climate change. (Original version in French by Aminata Niang)