Failure to tackle poverty could have major impact

Cascading global crises have left 54 countries – home to more than half of the world’s poorest people - in dire need of debt relief, the UN said. In a new report, the United Nations Development Programme warned that dozens of developing nations were facing a rapidly deepening debt crisis and that “the risks of inaction are dire”.

UNDP said without immediate relief, at least 54 countries would see rising poverty levels, and “desperately needed investments in climate adaptation and mitigation will not happen”. That was worrisome since the affected countries were “among the most climate-vulnerable in the world”.

The agency’s report, published ahead of meetings of International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, and also of G20 finance ministers in Washington, highlighted the need for swift action. But despite repeated warnings, “little has happened so far, and the risks have been growing,” UNDP chief Achim Steiner told reporters in Geneva. “That crisis is intensifying and threatening to spill over into an entrenched development crisis across dozens of countries across the world.” The poor, indebted countries are facing converging economic pressures and many find it impossible to pay back their debt or access new financing. The UN agency said debt troubles had been brewing in many of the affected countries long before the Covid-19 pandemic hit. “The rapid build-up in debt over the past decade has been consistently underestimated,” it said.

The freeze on debt repayment during the Covid crisis to lighten their burden has expired and negotiations under the G20 Common Framework created during the pandemic to help heavily-indebted countries find a path to restructure their obligations has been moving at a snail’s pace. According to available data, 46 of the 54 countries had amassed public debt totalling $782 billion in 2020, the report said.

Argentina, Ukraine and Venezuela alone account for more than a third of that amount.

The situation is deteriorating rapidly, with 19 of the developing countries now effectively shut out of the lending market -- 10 more than at the start of the year. A third of all the developing economies have meanwhile seen their debt labelled as being “substantial risk, extremely speculative or default,” UNDP’s chief economist George Gray Molina told reporters.

The countries at the most immediate risk are Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Tunisia, Chad and Zambia, he said. Gray Molina said private creditors have so far been the biggest obstacle to moving forward with needed restructuring.

But he suggested that the current market conditions could pave the way for a debt deal, as private creditors see the value of their holdings plunge by as much as 60 percent.

Steiner, who has repeatedly raised the alarm about the crisis, voiced hope the international community might finally recognise that action is in everyone’s shared interest.

Shocks related to the COVID-19 pandemic and the war in Ukraine mean the world is unlikely to meet a longstanding goal of ending extreme poverty by 2030, the World Bank said in a new report released on Wednesday.

The COVID-19 pandemic marked a historic turning point after decades of poverty reduction, the report said, with 71 million more people living in extreme poverty in 2020.

That meant 719 million people - or about 9.3% of the world’s population - were living on just $2.15 a day, and the ongoing war, reduced growth in China and higher food and energy prices threatened to further stall efforts to reduce poverty, it said.

Barring sharp growth gains, an estimated 574 million people, or about 7% of the world’s population, would still be subsisting at that same income level by 2030, mostly in Africa, it said. World Bank President David Malpass said the new Poverty and Shared Prosperity report showed the grim outlook facing tens of million of people, and called for major policy changes to boost growth and help jumpstart efforts to eradicate poverty.