debt crisis

G20 world leaders have failed to take definitive action to tackle poverty, hunger, climate, debt and deprivation that is crippling millions of people around the world, says Oxfam.

Many rich countries are using dishonest and misleading accounting to inflate their climate finance contributions to developing countries – in 2020 by as much as 225 percent, according to investigations by Oxfam.

“Today’s lack of progress on debt relief is as irresponsible as it is underwhelming. Merely encouraging private sector creditors and multilateral banks to participate in the Debt Service Suspension Initiative (DSSI) is woefully inadequate and a dereliction of duty. The G20 is in denial of the scale of response needed to address the worse global crisis in a century," said Jaime Atienza, Oxfam International’s Debt Policy Lead, in response to the communiqué of the G20 Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors Meeting.

The coronavirus pandemic is fast pushing developing countries toward a debt crisis that would be catastrophic for their fight against poverty, with the likelihood of multi-billion-dollar defaults that will hurt the entire global economy, warned Oxfam ahead of the G20 Finance Ministers’ meeting this weekend (July 18-19).