The Day after the Pandemic: Public Debt and Economic Recovery in Emerging Market and Low Income Countries

Join M-RCBG Senior Fellow George Chouliarakis (former finance minister of Greece), Heiko Hesse (Senior Economist at the Strategy, Policy and Review Department of the IMF), Anne-Laure Kiechel, (founder and CEO of Global Sovereign Advisory - an independent organization advising states on public policy and sovereign debt issues), Yannis Manuelides (Partner and Head of Sovereigns and International Institutions practice at Allen & Overy), and Ugo Panizza (Professor of International Economics, Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, Geneva) for an in-depth discussion of the economic outlook of Emerging Market and Low-Income Countries after the pandemic.​

The COVID-19 pandemic has triggered a steep increase in the public debt levels of a wide swathe of emerging market and low-income countries. Some of them have already defaulted. Many others have been able to maintain capital market access only thanks to exceptionally favorable global liquidity conditions. Yet, as their financing needs increase substantially and concurrently, and the financial market mindset changes, the specter of a new large wave of sovereign debt defaults is reemerging. How can we avoid a ‘lost decade’ of economic instability and low growth? What can governments and multilateral lenders do to restore fiscal sustainability? How can they make debt restructuring more expedient? And how can economic policy in advanced market economies support the recovery in the rest of the world?