The finance minister requests coordinated international efforts to restructure debt for developing nations

Nirmala Sitharaman, the finance minister, called for coordinated international measures to aid heavily indebted countries in their attempts to deleverage at a time when multilaterism is the greatest threat.

Before the G20 meeting next month in New Delhi, she spoke online at a workshop organized by the finance ministry and the Reserve Bank here. She said that multilaterism is now facing its largest challenge. “We haven’t faced any challenges as significant in recent years,”

She continued by saying that New Delhi had made sure that, for the time being, geopolitical conflicts did not trump international collaboration, which is the primary goal of the G20 organization and the summit.

 

The management of the global debt problems that many countries are now confronting has been given top priority by India’s G20 chairmanship. The minister stated that multilateral lenders are encountering numerous difficulties in coming to such solutions, adding that it is time for the international community to collaborate and find stronger ways to coordinate in debt restructuring efforts for low-income and vulnerable middle-income countries facing debt stress and vulnerabilities.

 

She urged concerted efforts to ensure that everyone’s future is better and noted that during New Delhi’s G20 presidency, it has so far been achieved that common ground is reached on all economic issues, particularly in finding a solution to the debt overhang that many middle-income countries are currently experiencing.

 

Another ongoing effort has been to address the problems with multilaterism that multilateral lending agencies are currently facing as a result of the growing demands from both lending and borrowing countries for them to expand their core business beyond their core developmental mandate. A team of experts has been assembled by the G20 to identify some long-term fixes.