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All sovereign debt restructurings are inherently messy, expensive, exasperating, time-consuming, and contentious. These are the familiar pathologies in the international system to resolve unsustainable sovereign debts. But the period since the onset of the Covid-19 crisis has revealed (to use a term we all learned during pandemic lockdowns) several new co-morbidities. These include a breakdown in the ability of the major external creditor groups (traditional Paris Club lenders, non-Paris Club bilateral creditors like China and bondholders) to coordinate their debt relief efforts, the increasingly diverse nature of the private-sector entities holding claims against a debtor state, and the total absence of any mechanisms—statutory or contractual—that can be used to ensure that the sacrifices made by the vast majority of claimants and official sector sponsors in the economic recovery process cannot be exploited by the uncooperative few. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article argues that the response from the Group of Twenty (G20) and the Paris Club to the covid-19 pandemic in the field of sovereign debt marks a turning point in the international debt architecture. In articulating a new approach, G20 leaders and Paris Club creditors approved the Debt Service Suspension Initiative (DSSI), which seeks to provide fiscal relief to help low-income economies (LIEs) face the pandemic crisis. Thereafter, the G20 and the Paris Club endorsed the Common Framework for Debt Treatments beyond the DSSI (CFDT), a mechanism to tackle the solvency problems of LIEs through debt restructuring processes. The CFDT is the first mechanism since the Paris Club’s creation in 1956 that brings together both its members and non members on a permanent basis, and the first one that the G20 rather than the Group of Seven (G7) established. The CFDT’s design takes into account the changes in the sovereign debt landscape over the last 25 years, but it also seeks to maintain the Paris Club’s influence as the main forum for sovereign debt restructuring despite its declining importance.

China has been increasingly involved in debt restructurings for low- and middle-income countries. This paper presents case studies of China's debt relief actions overseas: Iraq (2003), Cuba (2010), Seychelles (2011), Chad (2017), Zambia (2018), Mozambique (2018), Cameroon (2019), Republic of Congo (2019) and Venezuela (in progress). These cases shed light on the commonalities and particularities of China's actions, and underline the evolution of its restructuring terms. We highlight the lack of formal coordination between China and other creditors. China almost exclusively made its own decision on providing restructurings and restructuring terms. The magnitude of China's debt relief actions remains generally limited and varies across countries, depending on whether other creditors have also provided debt restructurings. China seems to have a growing preference for cancellation of accumulated arrears to nominal debt principal reduction. The debt rescheduling cases have significantly increased in recent years as well. This evolution brings China closer to the flow treatment that the Paris Club privileged in its early years of operations and the prevailing practices among private creditors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

On September 10, 2015, the UN General Assembly voted to adopt basic principles on the sovereign debt restructuring process to establish a clear framework for managing financial crises. In this paper, I draw on insights from the neoliberal institutionalist literature on the "lock-in" of institutional agreements to show that there are clear procedures for debt restructuring when examining agreements among states in three institutions: the IMF, the Paris Club, and Export Credit Agencies (ECAs). For example, creditor states require that debtor states be under an IMF arrangement before debt restructuring. After debt restructuring is completed, creditor and debtor states can benefit from export credit facilities. The empirical part of the paper finds that three (Indonesia, Kenya, and Nigeria) out of fourteen developing countries identified in an IMF study examining export credits and Paris Club debt restructuring illustrate these agreements through the process of debt restructuring followed by the extension of new export credits from ECAs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite the frequency of official debt restructurings, little systematic evidence has been produced on their characteristics and implications. Using a dataset covering more than 400 Paris Club agreements, this paper fills that gap. It provides a comprehensive description of the evolving characteristics of these operations and studies their impact on debtors. The progressive introduction of new terms of treatment gradually turned the Paris Club from an institution primarily concerned with preserving creditors’ claims into an instrument to foster development in the world’s poorer nations, among other objectives. Our study finds that more generous restructuring conditions involving nominal relief are associated with an acceleration of per capita GDP growth and with a reduction in poverty and inequality. We also find that countries receiving nominal relief tend to receive lower aid flows subsequently, the opposite being the case for countries receiving high reductions in the net present value of their obligations, but no nominal haircuts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Possible reforms to global sovereign debt restructuring procedures have largely been categorized as either 'contractual/market-based' or 'statutory'. A closer look to the major Collective Action Clauses proposal shows that this is a false dichotomy. While Collective Action Clauses are useful technical instruments, they are by no means a substitute for a comprehensive debt restructuring framework. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using a panel of developed and developing countries and data for the period 1980 to 2005, we find that debt crises trigger financial reforms. We also show that (i) when general economic conditions deteriorate, financial reforms become more likely to take place; (ii) IMF-stabilization programmes and sovereign debt restructurings favour the implementation of financial reforms; and (iii) the quality of economic institutions strongly boosts financial reforms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Programmes designed to alleviate developing country debt have been implemented by bilateral, commercial and multilateral creditors and sovereign debt has been restructured under Paris Club negotiations. These strategies have not been very successful at reducing the debt levels of developing countries, in part because they continue to receive export credit insurance facilities through export credit agencies (ecas). The purpose of this paper is to examine the high percentages of developing country debt owed to governmental ecas. Analysis of the external debt of low-income and lower middle-income economies at five year intervals from 1980 to 2010 finds a substantial part of the indebtedness of these economies is held by ecas. Analysis of specific sub-Saharan African countries undergoing debt rescheduling and forgiveness through Paris Club negotiations was done for Ghana and Kenya. These results show that, following debt restructuring, new export credit guarantees and/or loans were forthcoming to these countries from the ecas of the creditor countries that rescheduled their old debt in Paris Club negotiations during 2000–12. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the teachers' course in Paris, France. Topics discussed include the popularity of the name of Czech writer Marie Riegrová-Palackál in the philanthropic activities of Bohemian women throughout the 19th century, the approval given for the establishment of St. James Nursery on March 28, 1866, and the authority given by France Minister of Public Education Victor Duruy to French educator Marie Pape-Carpantier to give the nursery teachers with a series of lectures.

Despite new interest in the implications of growing institutional density for international cooperation, and in so-called public-private governance, the inter-play between public and private regimes has so far been largely overlooked. This article draws on the emerging literature on parallel regimes in international governance to analyze the evolution of the norms and rules governing sovereign debt restructuring from the early 1980s to the mid-2000s, with a particular focus on the interplay between those covering official bilateral (or Paris Club) debt, and those dealing with private credits. It shows how, from the mid-1990s onward, changes in market and political environments turned burden sharing between bilateral and private creditors into a contentious issue, partly undermining the existing framework for public-private cooperation, and confirms that a focus on institutional interplay can help identify some of the key dynamics behind public-private cooperation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]