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From Debt to Growth: A Proposal for a Growth and Investment Reset

A wall of Covid-era borrowing is coming due just as the cost of money has climbed. New analysis from The Rockefeller Foundation finds that roughly 40 low- and lower-middle-income countries are facing a crisis of cash flow and fiscal space — not insolvency — and proposes a way to resolve it before it becomes one.

The paper sets out a Growth and Investment Reset: a surge of long-term, affordable financing from the IMF and World Bank, matched by a G20 commitment to stop drawing money back out, for countries that commit to ambitious investment and reform plans. It was developed with technical input from Finance for Development Lab, Global Sovereign Advisory, AidData, Brad Setser, and Stephen Paduano, and informed by the Bellagio Center convening “From Debt to Growth.”

Key Findings:

  •  
    0%%

    of government revenue

    now goes to interest payments in developing countries on average — more than double the level before the last major debt initiative

  •  
    0CountriesCountries

    face acute liquidity

    pressure while still carrying sustainable debt levels, making them candidates for the Reset

  •  
    $0BillionBillion

    in principal

    comes due to G20 creditors from those countries through 2030 — the outflow the Reset is designed to halt

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