ESWATINI’S WORLD BANK DEBT STANDS

MBABANE – The Kingdom of Eswatini is above the mark of 25 poorest countries in the world and has been excluded from an initiative to have its debt with the World Bank cancelled.

Over 300 lawmakers from around the world last Wednesday urged the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank to cancel the debts of the poorest countries in response to the coronavirus pandemic, and to boost funding to avert a global economic meltdown.

The initiative, led by former US presidential candidate Senator Bernie Sanders and Representative Ilham Omar, a Democrat from Minnesota, comes amid growing concern that developing countries and emerging economies will be devastated by the pandemic. To assist the Kingdom of Eswatini in its efforts to prevent, detect and respond to the threat posed by COVID-19, the World Bank Group  approved E110.6 million ($6 million) in health emergency funding for a project that will help strengthen the country’s health systems preparedness to respond to this and potential future emergencies.

Obligations

In the letter, parliamentarians from two dozen countries on all six continents, said debt service obligations of the poorest countries should be cancelled outright, instead of being simply suspended, as agreed by the group of 20 countries in April.
Failing to do so means those countries would not be able to prioritise spending needed to fight the virus, which in turn could lead to continued disruption to global supply chains and financial markets, they wrote.

The lawmakers also urged the IMF’s Georgieva and World Bank President David Malpass to support creation of trillions of Dollars of new Special Drawing Rights, the currency of the IMF.
Sanders said poor countries needed every cent to care for their people, instead of servicing the ‘unsustainable debts’ they owed to the large international financial institutions.

“Cancelling the debt of the poorest countries was the very least that the World Bank, IMF and other international financial institutions should do to prevent an unimaginable increase in poverty, hunger, and disease that threatens hundreds of millions of people,” he said as quoted by Money web.

However, Communications Officer in the Ministry of Finance said Eswatini had no debt with the IMF and the country was not part of the initiative. She confirmed, however, that Eswatini had loans with the World Bank.

Status

According to the World Population Review, 2020, the financial status of a country has nearly everything to do with a nation’s gross domestic product (GDP). This value correlates with the monetary value of a country’s goods, services, and products over the course of a year.

So the GDP of every country is calculated annually, and it is very similar to credit scores in a sense, albeit on a much larger scale. Eswatini’s GDP in 2018 was E87 billion ($4.711 billion).

The WPR listed Liberia, Central African Republic, Burundi, Democratic Republic of Congo, Niger, Malawi and Mozambique as some of the poorest countries in the world.
Eswatini is not listed among the 25 poorest countries in the world.

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