By Abdi Ali
Published October 17, 2019
Finance ministers of the 53-member Commonwealth of nations are on October 17 expected to discuss coordinated interventions to prevent future debt crises.
The meeting, to be held in US American political capital, Washington, DC, will be chaired by the Finance Minister of Cyprus, Harris Georgiades, under the theme, ‘Preventing Debt Crises: The Roles of Creditors and Debtors’. It will be preceded by sessions for senior finance ministry officials and central bank governors, according to a statement from Commonwealth Secretariat in London, Britain,.\
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Ministers are expected to explore policy options and strategies by which debtor countries can work with creditors to prevent the recurrence of debt crises. Debt crises, as witnessed recently in Greece and Argentina, can devastate economic growth, increase poverty and derail global agendas such as the UN Sustainable Development Goals and Paris Agreement.
“The meeting comes at a time when global financial institutions, including the International Monetary Fund, have indicated another global debt crisis could be on the horizon,” says Commonwealth Secretary-General Patricia Scotland.“We have seen the calamitous impact that the Asian debt crisis and the 2008 global financial crisis had in our member countries of, and we know the grave threat that the recurrence of such crises would have on the health of the global economy. So the countries of the Commonwealth are determined to work together to prevent this from happening.”
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Baroness Scotland is scheduled to present the findings of the 2019 Commonwealth Economic Development Report which examines the debt challenges member countries had to tackle in the aftermath of the 2008 global financial crisis as the ministers consider ways in which the newly-developed Commonwealth financial technology (fin-tech) toolkit can be deployed to help countries create and share innovative, technology-driven responses to emerging financial challenges.
