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New African Debt Database Shows Chinese Loans Are Cheap, But Not the Cheapest

by Eric Olander
source: Kiel Institute for the World Economy

Researchers at the Kiel Institue for the World Economy in Germany launched a new database of African debt that confirms a key Chinese talking point: Beijing’s loans to African countries are significantly cheaper than those of commercial creditors.

However, David Mihalyi and Christoph Trebesch, both prominent scholars on African debt issues, also found that Chinese loans are considerably more expensive than those from multilateral lenders like the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund.

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