Debt relief for the world’s poorest countries will once again be a topic of discussion at yet another high-profile G20 gathering this weekend in Rome. Yet, there’s good reason to doubt that little more will come out of this meeting than any of the previous G20 conferences since the beginning of the pandemic.
What’s at issue here is the status of the G20’s Common Framework — a debt relief proposal introduced last November together with the Paris Club that was intended to bolster the G20’s Debt Service Suspension Initiative (DSSI) by including private creditors and bilateral lenders who did not participate in the DSSI.