UN Says Solutions Exist To Rapidly Ease Debt Burden Of Poor Nations

Geneva, (APP - UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 18th Apr, 2024) The heavy debt weighing on developing countries can be alleviated through readily available measures, the UN's trade and development chief said, pleading for bold international action.

Rebeca Grynspan compared the debt burden facing poorer countries to "a reverse blood transfusion", with money flowing "from the ones that need it to the ones that don't".

In 2022 -- the last year for which there are clear statistics -- developing countries "paid almost $50 billion more to their external creditors than they received in fresh disbursements", UNCTAD said in a recent report.

"What we need to be aware is that the markets are not in distress, people are," Grynspan told AFP in an interview this week. "We are in a debt crisis."

The former Costa Rican vice president and government minister pointed out that it was "the small and medium-sized countries that don't move the markets, that are the ones that are in the distress".

They are "in a situation where they are spending more on their debt than on human development, on their own health or education" systems.