Tag: World Bank

The World Bank issued a sobering economic forecast for Africa on Wednesday, warning of a sharp slowdown in growth due to the multiple global crises that are disproportionately impacting the continent. Rising inflation, food insecurity, higher interest rates in advanced economies and widening inequality exacerbated by the ...

Kenya’s new President William Ruto faces a steep debt mountain as he enters office. Servicing the country’s debts consumed 63.5% of tax revenues in the first two months of the current financial, a rate that’s expected to continue next year. For the first time, debt repayments are also projected ...

Chinese lending is increasingly shifting from boosting development to helping indebted countries keep the lights on. This is now adding to debt distress across the developing world. AidData, a research group at the College of William and Mary focusing on Chinese lending, ...

African governments owe nearly three times as much money to Western private creditors than they do to Chinese lenders, according to a new report by the UK-based NGO Debt Justice. The group's findings are based on World Bank data and reveal a ...

Two leading World Bank economists issued a stinging rebuke against policymakers in developing countries who have blamed the worsening debt crisis on the pandemic.  "The seeds were sown long before COVID-19," wrote Marcello Estevão and Sebastian Essl in a World Bank blog post ...

While China's financing of Global South infrastructure faces ongoing criticism from the World Bank (see above,) these traditional development institutions are partly to blame for many Global South countries' inability to boost development.  This is the viewpoint of Justin Yifu Lin, ...

David Malpass, the president of the World Bank, again singled out China in calling for new debt restructuring mechanisms to help the developing world. Malpass and the International Monetary Fund’s managing director Kristalina Georgieva told reporters that rising interest rates are exacerbating a debt crisis among developing countries already ...

A sharp cut in Chinese lending to Kenya means that Japan now outpaces it in new lending to the East African country, according to new numbers released by the Kenyan Treasury. Compared to a height of $1.2 billion in 2016, Chinese lending to Kenya for the current fiscal ...

The World Bank has replaced China as Kenya's largest external creditor according to a new Treasury report submitted to parliament this week. Kenya now owes the multilateral lender $10.4 billion compared to $6.9 billion due to Chinese creditors, namely the China ...

For the second time in a week, the World Bank has raised the alarm about mounting debt in Africa. A new blog post shows that not only has public debt in Southern and Eastern Africa doubled over the last decade, but the proportion of pricy private debt is also ...

As many as twelve countries could default on their loans this year, a senior World Bank economist warned in a blog post on Monday. Marcello Estevão, the WB’s Global Director for Macroeconomics, Trade and Investment, said the crisis in Ukraine is a final shock ...

The world’s poorest countries will pay about $52.8 billion in debt servicing costs this year, of which 26% ($13.7 billion) will go to Chinese lenders, according to a new report released on Monday by the Green Finance and Development Center at Fudan University in Shanghai. ...