Debt Roundtable Meetings Attempt to Break Impasse on Debt Relief From China and Private Sector

Schedule for Friday, April 14th:

• 10:30 AM – 2:00 PM: Vigil
  
  
• 2:00 PM: Press Conference
  
  
  • Opening Prayer
    
    
    • Bishop Charles Kasonde, Bishop of Solwezi, Zambia, President of Association of Episcopal Conferences of Eastern Africa (AMECEA)
      
      
  • Speakers
     
    • Rev. Charles Chilufya S.J., Executive Director, Jesuit Justice and Ecology Network Africa
      
      
    • Patricia Miranda, Global Advocacy Director, LATINDADD
      
      
    • Athena Peralta, Programme Executive for Economic and Ecological Justice, World Council of Churches
      
      
    • Eric LeCompte, Executive Director, Jubilee USA
      
      
    • Candace Archer, Policy Director, AFL-CIO
      
      
    • Bishop Charles Kasonde, Bishop of Solwezi, Zambia, President of Association of Episcopal Conferences of Eastern Africa (AMECEA)

The challenges to the global economy and slow economic growth will continue this year, said IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva. Delivering her traditional “curtain raiser” speech before the opening of the IMF and World Bank Spring meetings, she anticipated a 3% growth this year, below 3.4% last year.

“The IMF is reporting bad news for wealthy and poor countries,” said Eric LeCompte, Executive Director of the religious development group Jubilee USA Network. LeCompte monitored IMF policies for more than a decade. “The vulnerable are struggling with the pandemic, inflation and rising food prices.”

For the poorest countries, the IMF chief sees higher debt payments and lower demand for what they export. This could fuel further hunger and poverty increases.

Sixty percent of low-income countries and a quarter of emerging economies are at or near debt crises. Since February the IMF initiated, alongside the Indian Presidency of the G20 and the World Bank, a Global Sovereign Debt Roundtable to resolve disagreements that stall debt relief processes.

“While more countries face debt crises, we still don't have a fully functioning debt relief process,” noted LeCompte. "Developing countries need debt relief and access to more resources."

Georgieva called for donor countries to address funding shortfalls so the IMF maintains capacity to provide interest-free loans to the poorest members. 

Watch the curtain-raiser speech here.

April 6, 2023 | 11:00–12:00 pm ET 

Prioritizing Vulnerable Communities in Global Finance - Webinar

When leading global financiers converge on Washington, DC, for the spring meetings of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, a host of practical and ethical issues will compete for priority, each a part of the polycrisis that confronts us. The 2023 agenda for the G20 leaders will be an integral part of the discussions. Global religious communities play important roles and have significant stakes in the outcomes, though what those roles are and how they are engaged is often unclear. Among the leading issues are care and concern for the most vulnerable: giving meaning to the call for a "preferential option for the poor" (a phrase used by Pope Francis in his encyclical Laudato Si), and translating intentions on addressing climate change into practical action. This webinar will preview how these issues may affect the G20 agenda, especially as they relate to ethical imperatives and the actual and potential roles that religious communities play in responding to global crises.

Panelists include Rev. Charles Chilufya, S.J., Director of the Justice and Ecology Office, Jesuit Conference of Africa and Madagascar (JCAM), Eric LeCompte, Executive Director, Jubilee USA Network, Katherine Marhsall, Senior Fellow, Georgetown's Berkley Center for Religion, Peace and World Affairs, Professor of the Practice of Development, Conflict and Religion, School of Foreign Service, Athena Peralta, Programme Executive for Economic and Ecological Justice, World Council of Churches

Sponsors: Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs at Georgetown University, the G20 Interfaith Forum and Jubilee USA Network

RSVP by clicking here. 

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April 12, 2023 | 9:00–10:30 am ET (1:00–2:30 pm GMT)

Achieving Debt Crisis Resolution That Delivers Today and in the Future

Rising debt burdens in low- and middle-income countries constrain their response to urgent people's needs in an adverse and uncertain context. This unfolding debt crisis poses risks to all regions in the global south and ultimately constitutes a risk to global economic and financial stability. We will hear from different regional realities how the current instruments to deal with debt resolution are insufficient and unfit to address the current and future debt challenges. Proposals to help countries avoid the debt trap, dealing with overlapping crises and boosting an equitable recovery will also be discussed.

Red Latinoamericana por Justicia Económica y Social (Latindadd)'s Global Advocacy Director, Patricia Miranda, moderates a panel with Jason Braganza, Director, African Forum and Network on Debt and Development (AFRODAD), Mae Buenaventura, Team Manager of Debt Justice Program, Asian People’s Movement on Debt and Development (APMMD), Maia Colodenco, Former Head of the International Affairs Unit, Argentina's Ministry of Economy, Mark Flanagan, Deputy Director of the Strategy Policy and Review Department, International Monetary Fund (IMF)

Sponsors: Red Latinoamericana por Justicia Económica y Social (Latindadd), African Forum and Network on Debt and Development (AFRODAD), Asian People’s Movement on Debt and Development (APMMD), Jubilee USA Network, European Network on Debt and Development (Eurodad), Debt Justice Network Norway, Arab Watch Coalition, The Southern and Eastern African Trade Information and Negotiations Institute (SEATINI), Society for International Development, Christian Aid

Location: HQ2-03B-768B Lecture Room

Registration to the World Bank/IMF Annual Meetings will be required to access the premises. No registration is needed to access the livestream, available at: https://www.imf.org/en/live

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April 14, 2023 | 10:30 am–2:30 pm ET 

Jubilee USA Vigil and Press Conference: Protecting Lives, Livelihoods and Planet

Join us on Friday, April 14th for a vigil and press conference in occasion of the IMF, World Bank and G20 Meetings. Hear how religious and community leaders from around the world are working for a Jubilee.

10:30 am–2:00 pm ET: Vigil 

2:00 pm–2:30 pm ET: Press Conference

Speakers include Bishop Charles Kasonde, Bishop of Solwezi, Zambia, President of Association of Episcopal Conferences of Eastern Africa (AMECEA), Rev. Charles Chilufya, S.J., Director of the Justice and Ecology Office, Jesuit Conference of Africa and Madagascar (JCAM), Patricia Miranda, Global Advocacy Director, Red Latinoamericana por Justicia Económica y Social (Latindadd), Athena Peralta, Programme Executive for Economic and Ecological Justice, World Council of Churches, Eric LeCompte, Executive Director, Jubilee USA Network, Cathy Feingold, Director, AFL-CIO International Department and Deputy President, ITUC (TBC)

A full schedule is available here: https://www.jubileeusa.org/spring_meetings_jubilee_vigil_pressconference

Protecting Lives, Livelihoods and Planet

April 14, 2023

 

Where:

Outside IMF and World Bank, Community Park 1824-1884 H St NW, Washington, DC 20006.

Schedule for Friday, April 14th

• 10:30 AM – 2:00 PM: Vigil
  
  
• 2:00 PM: Press Conference
  
  
  • Opening Prayer
    
    
    • Bishop Charles Kasonde, Bishop of Solwezi, Zambia, President of Association of Episcopal Conferences of Eastern Africa (AMECEA)
      
      
  • Speakers
     
    • Rev. Charles Chilufya S.J., Executive Director, Jesuit Justice and Ecology Network Africa
      
      
    • Patricia Miranda, Global Advocacy Director, LATINDADD
      
      
    • Athena Peralta, Programme Executive for Economic and Ecological Justice, World Council of Churches
      
      
    • Eric LeCompte, Executive Director, Jubilee USA
      
      
    • Candace Archer, Policy Director, AFL-CIO
      
      
    • Bishop Charles Kasonde, Bishop of Solwezi, Zambia, President of Association of Episcopal Conferences of Eastern Africa (AMECEA)

Register at Jubilee IMF/ World Bank Vigil and Press Conference Registration

Follow the livestream here. 

Eric LeCompte, writing for the Cambridge University Press, Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs journal, examines the impact of high sovereign debts on healthcare in developing countries. Read an excerpt below and click here for the full essay.

Addressing Debt Crises, Healthcare Access, and the Pandemic

By Eric LeCompte

Most developing countries continue to wrestle with dramatic health and economic crises spurred by the coronavirus pandemic. Many countries were and still are ill-prepared to deal with the pandemic because of debt crises and unsustainable sovereign debt. As African countries struggle with debt, as of mid-2022, only 15 percent of the continent was fully vaccinated against COVID-19 according to the World Health Organization.

This essay examines the impact of high sovereign debts on healthcare in developing countries. As a civil society advocate, I have monitored how countries’ debts weakened healthcare systems prior to the pandemic and left developing countries with limited resources to provide healthcare and respond to the pandemic. While developing country social infrastructure and health systems are subject to a range of structural threats from corruption to the effects of austerity, unsustainable debt exacerbates most threats these countries face.

Read more here.

5th United Nations Leaders Summit of the Least Developed Countries: FROM POTENTIAL TO PROSPERITY

March 8th, 2023
Doha, Qatar

Fulfilling the Demand of a World Where We All Have Enough: Lifting the Least Developed Countries from Crisis to Resilience

"Sometimes the miracle is that we were already given enough, and we just figured out how to share it…"

By Eric LeCompte, Executive Director, Jubilee USA Network

(Remarks as prepared for delivery)

Your Excellencies, it's good to be with you again and join you for this critical high-level roundtable. I wish to thank the ministers and my other co-panelists and I hope I might highlight, engage and offer further insights into their comments.

Thank you to his Royal Highness who shares with us the sacred value carried by Gulf states of hospitality and welcome. Thanks to her Excellency, Under Secretary General Fatima and her team for making this event possible. Thanks to the Qatari staff, UN staff and the delegation staff from every country who prepared us to be here. And we extend our thanks to the civil society groups and charities among us, who join us all here, in our deep yearning to build a world, to create a world, where all have enough and no one is left behind.

Here in the Gulf as we are all taught that sacred tradition of welcome, hospitality and sharing - we can acknowledge that such sacred tradition is endemic to all of our cultures and religious traditions. The Hebrew scriptures reminds us that we never know when we might be entertaining angels. The Christian, Benedictine tradition exhorts us to welcome all as if we have the very honor of welcoming the Holy One.

Today, we are here to talk about hospitality and sharing. Today, we are here to speak to the urgency in resolving multiple global crises. Today, we are here to celebrate the very real successes of the Least Developed Countries in using emergency pandemic response aid. Today, we are here to accept the challenge to raise the revenues we need, to stop corruption and build a world where we all have enough.

First - where we are at.

The 46 so-called "Least Developed Countries" face acute vulnerabilities: Relatively small economic size, sluggish progress of structural transformation, heightened dependence on external aid and finance, institutional weaknesses, political instability and in too many tragic cases, conflict. 40 percent of the population in LDCs live in extreme poverty, compared to 12% in other developing countries.

Economic growth is highly volatile in the poor LDCs.

Right now with the pandemic and war in Ukraine, more than 251 million people in the Least Developed Countries are severely food insecure and experience hunger. The Least Developed Countries host 40% of the world’s poor – even though they only have 13% of the global population. In fact, the proportion of the global poor in the Least Developed Countries more than doubled since 1990.

As of March of last year, 21 of the 46 LDCs were in or at risk of debt distress and debt crisis. The share of government revenues spent on servicing public and publicly guaranteed debt rose from 13 percent to 15 percent from 2019 to 2021. In 2017 LDCs already reached $313 billion in debt.

Debt to export ratios shot up during the pandemic, from an average of 158% to more than 200% and in more than half of them that rate is above 250%. This is ALL debt – so not just the public debt - but more than 70% of that total debt is public debt.

Meanwhile, LDCs spend only an average of around 2% of their GDP on social protection and healthcare, combined. Debt and economic shocks alone put the UN Sustainable Development Goals out of reach. Before COVID, we remember the shock to our three West African neighbors because of Ebola.

Solutions, Amazing Success and the Road ahead:

1.) Expanding debt relief, debt transparency and debt work out procedures are critical - both through existing processes and new processes.

Debt is the chief issue facing most of the Least Developed Countries.

We need better debt sustainability frameworks and need to look at how debt affects the average person in our economies - Gross National Income, GNI, as opposed to GDP is often a better indicator of the suffering and strength of our people.

Consider that LDCs are 46 out of 73 countries eligible for the G20's Common Framework process.

So, we must make the Common Framework or another debt relief process work. We must expand bankruptcy and debt work-out procedures for all countries in crisis.

Privately held debt is also a key issue for the Least Developed Countries.

This is why we are incredibly excited and ask for all of your help to pass a New York Law that can shift the financial system for developing countries to have real, comprehensive options.

We must act in New York, as the world's financial capital, because more than 52 percent of the world's privately held debt is governed by New York law.

Thanks to New York Assemblymember Patricia Fahy and to Senator Brad Hoylman, we have, "the New York Taxpayer and International Debt Crises Protection Act, S.4747 and A.2970."

The legislation moves forward debt relief and aid for a world in crisis.

This legislation addresses global supply shocks and the high costs we are all paying around the world from eggs to cheese, flour to unga and tea to coffee. Work on this legislation is being led by global Muslim, Christian and Jewish organizations and the diaspora from LDC countries who call New York their second home.

They need your help. We need your help.

Passage of this law makes bankruptcy protections a reality for us.

We ask that every government and stakeholder here urge Governor Kathy Hochul and the New York Assembly and Senate to quickly, quickly pass this law that all of our lives and the lives and livelihoods of our people depend on.

2.) Raising additional revenue. Transparency. Tax, common digital tax and curbing illicit financial flows. These policies alone will raise billions and billions for our countries.

We can no longer wait for more aid from the North. It's not coming.

We are the ones we've been waiting for.

We can and we must take responsibility and harness these immense revenue streams. We must curb the scourge of corporate and professional tax evasion in our countries.

I wish to tell you a secret.

What may be the best kept secret in Washington DC.

That's the secret of the US Treasury's Office of Technical Assistance. The only role of this institution is to be at the service of every country that asks. Their role is to help you capture taxes from corporations and professionals who are not paying their share of taxes in your country. They assist with anti-corruption measures and ensure that budgets are passed transparently with the helpful oversight of our people.

Next, we need to increase the resources of development banks, and make them more efficient, effective and accountable. These banks will need to provide at least $200 billion of additional resources ANNUALLY to deal with the needs of these countries and offer highly concessional lending. We and you need to act to make this a reality.

Now we get to share some of the great successes of the Least Developed Countries in terms of emergency revenue use, and turn our conversation to Special Drawing Rights or SDRs. This emergency pandemic response aid has been well used by countries.

Through Jubilee USA's partnership with Africa's religious leaders, the Africa Catholic Bishops, Africa Caritas and the research Zambia study of our partners, the Jesuit Justice and Ecology Network Africa (JENA), some amazing things were discovered.

The SDRs in Zambia funded the Social Cash Transfer (SCT), the Rain Fed, Wetlands and Alternative Livelihood Programmes in the Ministry of Community Development and Social Services. Special Drawing Rights funded grants for all the hospitals in Zambia and these grants cover operation costs. The Zambia Medicines and Medical Supplies Agency (ZAMMSA), received SDRs which it used to finance the purchase of drugs, medical supplies, equipment and Covid-19 Vaccines.

While not a sustainable way to fund Zambia pensions, SDRs reduced the waiting period for pensioners to receive their money from more than three years to less than one year.

Further: Many developing countries—including The Least Developed Countries such as Benin, The Gambia, Madagascar, São Tomé and Príncipe, Uganda, Guinea-Bissau, all used or committed to use their SDRs to support public health and combat the spread of COVID-19. Liberia, Senegal, and Sierra Leone use SDRs specifically for vaccine imports, production and distribution.

Congratulations for such an effective use of Special Drawing Rights.

Because LDCs have used this emergency aid so well, we must hold northern governments accountable for their commitments to rechannel $100 billion to developing countries. AND, we must not stop our calls as a global community for a new creation of Special Drawing Rights and for International Monetary Fund gold sales.

Finally, we must rely on our most important natural resource, partner and our very reason for being - our people.

We need each other and must rely on one another. We are reminded by a concept known to all of us, a concept lifted recently by Pope Francis - that politics, leadership is a noble calling and a call to serve our people.

The more transparency we establish in budgets and transactions, the more our people are invested. The better we can serve, the more trust we establish, the more we can harness the rich resources of our countries. The more we work with our people to root out corruption at all levels, the more revenues we will raise.

We only go forward, together.

In closing, the promise of the Holy One to live in a world where we all have enough and our planet is protected, is not a dream - but a demand for every single one of us to fulfill.

The miracle, perhaps, may be more than the reality that the Holy One created enough for all of us out of nothing. Sometimes the miracle is that we were already given enough, and we just figured out how to share it.

Thanks.

Eric LeCompte is the Executive Director of the religious, interfaith development organization, Jubilee USA Network.

Download Eric LeCompte's remarks as a PDF here.

Eric LeCompte is featured in the United Nations Press regarding his suggestions on how the Least Developed Countries can meet the Sustainable Development Goals. Read an excerpt below and click here for the full story.

Challenged by Poor Access to External Financing, Aid, Least Developed Countries Must Mobilize Domestic Resources, Promote Investment, Speakers Stress at Doha Round Table

DOHA, 8 March — Efforts to mobilize domestic resources, increase Government revenues, promote investment and fight illicit financial flows are required to offset the challenges that least developed countries face in accessing concessional financing and insufficient external development aid, speakers stressed today as the fifth United Nations Conference on the Least Developed Countries held its last full day of high-level thematic round tables.

Opening the meeting on “Resource mobilization and strengthened global partnerships for sustainable development in least developed countries”, Sorasak Pan, Minister for Commerce of Cambodia and Co-Chair of the seventh high-level thematic round table, pointed out that least developed countries depend on public resources to finance their sustainable-development needs.  Fiscal deficits have only grown, occasioned by increased spending needs across all sectors in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.  Urgent measures are therefore needed to support economies and social-protection systems.  On that point, he highlighted the gender impact of such policies, as women are impacted the most when public services are cut.


Read more here.

Debt, Aid and Finance Top Agenda

Secretary Yellen Calls for More Aid for Ukraine while India Urges Ministers to Avoid Conversation on the War

Eric LeCompte is quoted by the Associated Press, ABC News, the Washington Post regarding the US nomination of Ajay Banga to be the World Bank President. Read an excerpt below and click here for the full story.

US nominates Ajay Banga for World Bank president

By Fatima Hussein 

WASHINGTON (AP) — The United States is nominating former Mastercard CEO Ajay Banga to lead the World Bank, President Joe Biden announced on Thursday, crediting him with critical experience on global challenges including climate change.

The news comes days after Trump appointee David Malpass announced plans to step down in June from his role leading the 189-nation poverty reduction agency. His five-year term was due to expire in April 2024.

Read more here: 

Eric LeCompte is quoted in Reuters regarding the introduction of the "New York Taxpayer and International Debt Crises Protection Act" in the New York State Senate. Read an excerpt below and click here for the full story.

New York state bill seen aiding poor country debt relief

By David Lawder

WASHINGTON, Feb 17 (Reuters) - As major debt-distressed countries and major creditors discussed ways to unlock faster debt relief on Friday, legislation under consideration in New York's state legislature would push private sector creditors to participate, state lawmakers and non-profit groups say.

New York State Senator Brad Holyman-Sigal, a Democrat representing lower and parts of mid-town Manhattan, said he introduced companion legislation to the "New York Taxpayer and International Debt Crises Prevention Act" already under consideration in the state assembly.

Read more here.