debt cancellation

Billionaire wealth has risen three times faster in 2024 than 2023. Five trillionaires are now expected within a decade.

Billionaire wealth grew by $2 trillion in 2024 alone, equivalent to roughly $5.7 billion a day, at a rate three times faster than the year before. An average of nearly four new billionaires were minted every week. Meanwhile, the number of people living in poverty has barely changed since 1990, according to World Bank data.

Billionaire wealth has risen three times faster in 2024 than in 2023. At least five trillionaires are now expected within a decade. Meanwhile, the number of people living in poverty has barely changed since 1990. Inequality is out of control.

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

In reaction to the UN's 2024 edition of the SOFI report, Eric Munoz, Oxfam’s food policy expert, said: “Global hunger remains stuck at shamefully high levels, driven by many reasons that together become convenient excuses for our governments to avoid decisive action. 

Responding to the G20 Finance Ministers’ meeting today, Nadia Daar, Head of Oxfam’s Washington DC Office, said: "The G20 is not delivering on its promise to rebalance the global economy and provide major relief. It has simply extended a freeze on bilateral debt-service payments through year-end, pushing the can down the road once again. If debt cancellation is not part of the solution, the world’s poorest countries will continue to struggle to cope with the pandemic and its devastating effects. 
 

Responding to the G20 Heads of State Summit, Rebecca Gowland, Head of Inequality, Campaigns and Policy, said: “In 2020 the richest economies bolstered their resilience to Covid-19 with a $10 trillion injection while providing 2,000 times less than that – $5 billion – in debt relief to the poorest countries. In the direst global health and socio-economic crises for 100 years the G20 has failed to adequately support the poorest people in the world.

Over 1,000 health professionals from 66 countries have signed a letter urging the G20 to cancel the debt of developing countries, ahead of tomorrow’s extraordinary G20 Finance Ministers meeting.

"The failure to cancel debt payments will only delay the tsunami of debt that will engulf many of the world’s poorest countries, leaving them unable to afford the investment in healthcare and social safety nets so desperately needed", said Jaime Atienza, Oxfam International's Debt Policy Lead, in reaction to the G20 Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors Meeting.