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The current debate about sovereign debt liquidity challenges in the Global South covers four distinct issues, which are sometimes conflated.

Responding to IMF Managing Director, Christine Lagarde’s curtain-raiser speech today, ahead of the IMF and World Bank Spring meetings, Nadia Daar, Oxfam International’s Head of Washington office, said: “Madame Lagarde reminds us that traditional approaches to economic growth are failing and poor countries are being hit hardest. We are glad the IMF recognizes the ‘winner takes most' economies we have created are unsustainable and we welcome her call to address excessive inequality through progressive tax measures and more spending on public services such as education…

Oxfam welcomes the G20’s attention to the sovereign debt crisis in the Global South, but warns about the risks involved in the G20’s approach to resolve it, outlined in more details in the IMF and World Bank Non-Paper on Actions to Support Countries Faced With Liquidity Challenges.  We strongly support the approach’s aim to significantly increase the net flow of resources to the Global South to back ambitious, country-owned national development and climate strategies. We urge the G20 to adopt several elements of the plan, including increasing bilateral grants, reviewing relevant IMF policies, increasing IMF and multilateral development banks’ resources including but not limited to a generous IDA21 replenishment, and redoubling efforts to promote effective and equitable domestic resources mobilization.

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) today publishes a major new report on global corporate taxation: “Spillov

Rich countries must open the way to cheaper mass-produced COVID-19 vaccines in order to protect every person in the world and avert a $9 trillion “worst case” global economic catastrophe, said Oxfam today. They should also agree this week to inject $650 billion more into the global economy to help developing countries cope with the pandemic’s already devasting effects.

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) board will meet this week [6 April] to discuss how to use the extra $2.8 billion windfall it made from selling 403.3 tons of gold late last year. The windfall profits should be used to cancel the debts of poor countries facing crises outside their control.

Responding to the IMF Board of Governors’ approval of a Special Drawing Rights (SDR) allocation of $650 billion, Nadia Daar, Head of Oxfam International’s Washington DC Office, said: “New SDRs will bring much-needed liquidity to struggling developing countries without adding to their unsustainable debt burdens. Now that this historic SDR issuance has been approved, governments must work transparently and together with civil society to ensure these resources are used to rescue collapsing health services and bolster social protection, and to deliver a fair and climate just recovery.  

Suspending debt owed to rich countries is only one piece of the puzzle. Rich private banks and investors should be pushed to cancel debts by enforcement and not left to voluntary action, said Oxfam today in response to the announcement that the G20 has agreed to suspend debt repayment of the poorest countries.

Oxfam’s Nicolas Mombrial said:

The IMF has already said that the coronavirus pandemic will trigger the worst economic fallout since the Great Depression —if ever there was a time to expand SDR allocations in a major way, it is now, said Oxfam today in response to the communiqué of the International Monetary and Financial Committee.