Government debt has risen substantially in emerging market and developing economies (EMDEs) since the global financial crisis. The current environment of low global interest rates and weak growth may appear to mitigate concerns about elevated debt levels. Considering currently subdued...

In the post-global financial crisis period, the financing of countercyclical policies led not only to a reduction in the fiscal surpluses across Sub-Saharan African countries, but also an increase in their levels of indebtedness. Although public debt for the region in 2018 was still below that...

Turkey has moved rapidly from a current account that was relatively in balance up to the turn of the millennia, to sustaining relatively large current account deficits over the past 15 years. Using annual data from 1986 to 2017 and a jackknife model-averaging estimator, the paper estimates the...

Debt vulnerabilities in low-income countries have increased substantially in recent years. Since 2013, median government debt has risen by about 20 percentage points of gross domestic product and increasingly comes from non-concessional and private sources. As a result, in most low-income...

Episodes of debt accumulation have been a recurrent feature of the global economy over the past fifty years. Since 2010, emerging and developing economies have experienced another wave of historically large and rapid debt accumulation. Similar past debt buildups have often ended in widespread...

Emerging market and developing economies have experienced recurrent episodes of rapid debt accumulation over the past fifty years. This paper examines the consequences of debt accumulation using a three-pronged approach: an event study of debt accumulation episodes in 100 emerging market and...

This paper provides a framework to assess the impact of infrastructure investment expected under the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) on the debt vulnerabilities of countries that are located on BRI transport and connectivity corridors in the absence of comprehensive and consistent information on...

Benin remains at moderate risk of external debt distress. The rating is unchanged from the previous November 2018 DSA. All the projected external debt burden indicators remain below their thresholds under the baseline, but the ratio of the present value (PV) of external debt to exports exceeds...

With some 19 million US Dollars (1.6 percent of GDP) in unresolved arrears to official bilateral creditors, Grenada remains in external public debt distress. However, debt appears sustainable reflecting favorable projected debt dynamics from substantial fiscal surpluses that are supported by the...

Niger's risk of external and overall public debt distress is rated "moderate" as in the previous DSA. While all thresholds are observed in the baseline, the PV of PPG external debt-to-exports ratio breaches its threshold under stress test scenarios. Debt-carrying capacity continues to be rated...