UNITED NATIONS: Developing countries' repayments on their public external debt alone will soar between $2.6 trillion and $3.4 trillion in 2020 and 2021 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) said.
The UNCTAD in has stressed that the pandemic has hit developing countries at a time when they have already been struggling with unsustainable debt burdens for many years as well as with rising health and economic needs. Developing countries now face a wall of debt service repayments throughout the 2020s, it said.
In 2020 and 2021 alone, repayments on their public external debt are estimated at nearly $3.4 trillion - - between $2 trillion and $2.3 trillion in high-income developing countries and between $666 billion and $1.06 trillion in middle- and low-income countries, it said.
The UNCTAD report called for a global debt deal for the developing world and underlines the vital need for decisive action to provide substantive debt relief to developing countries to free up sorely needed resources to respond to the raging pandemic.
