Eric LeCompte, Executive Director of Jubilee USA was featured in the Financial Times, writing on the US role in relieving unpayable poor country debt. Read the article below or here.
Letter: Relieving poor country debt is flagship US cause
By: Eric LeCompte
"Alan Beattie’s developing country debt diagnosis (“The papal call for debt relief that might not be needed”, Opinion, May 15) misses key parameters of the serious debt crises and distress that too many countries face.
African and low-income countries spend on debt service two-thirds more than their combined spending on health, education and social protection. Similar to Jubilee 2000, at the core of the Jubilee 2025 Catholic and interfaith leaders’ call for debt relief is the moral consideration that the principle of pacta sunt servanda has limits when it comes at the expense of countries’ investments on protecting their people, especially the most vulnerable. This is why the three previous popes focused on debt as one of the greatest threats of our time.
Pope Francis’s call, which will be continued by Pope Leo, hardly moves the goalposts from what was considered a debt crisis at the beginning of the millennium when Pope John Paul II called for debt relief. Forty-six developing countries pay today more than half of their revenue in debt service. The Heavily Indebted Poor Countries and Multilateral Debt Relief initiatives came about — and rather late at that — as a response to debt service levels that were less than half of the levels we face now.
The speculation about the Trump administration’s response seems premature. It was President Trump who in his first term led the way on debt relief for the poorest countries, a G20 Debt Service Suspension Initiative and the Common Framework. While not perfect, they were highly inclusive, innovative and pragmatic ways to offer debt forgiveness in a difficult new creditor landscape.
In fact, relieving unpayable poor country debt became and remains a flagship bipartisan cause in the US for sensible reasons. Both Treasury secretary Scott Bessent and Republican Congressional leadership highlighted the need to tackle global debt at the recent IMF meetings. Finding predictable and reliable mechanisms to resolve sovereign debt crises is in the interest of not just debtors, but also creditors.
Taxpayers, business, consumers, workers and savers in economies of creditor countries stand to benefit as much as debtor countries. Debt relief advances three priorities that we know our US administration holds dear: making America safer and more prosperous, making foreign assistance transparent and accountable, and securing other countries’ participation in this effort."