Tag: Transparency

The EU's answer to China's Belt and Road Initiative is facing new scrutiny from lawmakers at the European Parliament in Strasbourg. Global Gateway (GG), a program launched in 2021 to finance infrastructure in developing countries, was the focus of a new ...

The "debt trap" meme claims that China is intentionally lending vast sums of money to poor developing countries in Africa, and elsewhere, with the express intent to seize physical assets in those countries when they inevitably can't repay their debts.

This year's Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC) summit comes at a critical time for governments in both regions. While China is embroiled in an increasingly contentious great power duel with the United States, African governments are under mounting economic and social ...

By Kevin P. Gallagher China is being criticized for stepping up its policy to provide liquidity financing in the form of loans and currency swaps for countries in distress for the wrong reasons. Providing such liquidity shows that China is ...

The largest Chinese business association in Zimbabwe that's been at the center of a bitter dispute with a coalition of 27 civil society groups published a lengthy proposal this week that listed a detailed set of recommendations for how its members can bring an end to the ...

The World Bank is becoming increasingly explicit about its concerns related to Chinese lending practices in low and middle-income countries, even though it doesn't call out the Chinese government by name. On two separate occasions on Tuesday, the Bank issued warnings ...

This week's revelation from the AfDB that Africa's total public debt now stands at $546 billion, more than all of the revenue collected in 2021 by governments across the continent, is the latest indication that the debt issue is blooming into a full-blown crisis ...

Chinese creditors' obsession with secrecy and their outright refusal to cancel debts held by low-income countries will undermine the chances of success of any major sovereign debt restructuring initiative, argue World Bank economists Sebastian Horn and Carmen Reinhart along with University of Kiel economist Christoph Trebesch.

An influential group of scholars and finance leaders in the U.S. appealed for a new "global consensus" on debt transparency in developing countries and described China's involvement as "critical." The Bretton Woods Committee said in a report ...

The global discussion of the growing debt crisis in some Global South countries has been frustratingly slanted around the assumption that Chinese lending is particularly opaque. This is not to say that Chinese lending isn’t opaque – it is. In fact, some Chinese loan contracts are so ...

This week saw the announcement that the United Kingdom’s international development investment arm, the CDC Group, will invest $1 billion in Kenyan infrastructure. This will include funding a new rail transit hub in Nairobi. It’s interesting that the UK is leaning into ...

Some of Zambia's bondholders are once again expressing impatience with the government's handling of its debt relief talks and they've gone public with their longstanding demands for greater transparency in the process and equal treatment for all creditors. "Inter-creditor equity should ...