URGENT MEASURES NEEDED TO PREVENT WIDESPREAD DEBT CRISIS - Ministerial Meeting of Low-Income Francophone Countries

Ministers called upon the international community to take much stronger measures to avoid a new widespread debt crisis and to support the financing of the SDGs. [...] They also reiterated their recommendations to the IMF and the World Bank to help countries to collect higher and more progressive tax revenue and to reduce costs and risks of Public-Private Partnerships. [...] However, they are suffering from a lack of capacity to design and implement high-return projects to accelerate inclusive growth; from lack of information about the best financial terms offered by each creditor; from a scarcity of measures by the international community to reduce borrowing costs; and from fragmented ad hoc debt relief negotiations (in marked contrast to the HIPC Initiative). [...] ensure that debt relief is based on making debt sustainable to fund the SDGs, through greater coordination, comprehensive participation by all creditors, and speed to minimise arrears, improving on the key characteristics of the HIPC and MDRI initiatives. [...] 2) Private sector Financing Institutions such as the IFC, and the IMF, to analyse and publish the costs of previous PPPs, set benchmarks for current acceptable costs for PPPs, and set objectives for reducing these dramatically in future years.