The western debt traps and the real creditors behind this woe

WASHINGTON : A new global sovereign debt "roundtable" that will include China, other creditors and some borrowing countries will meet for the first time next month on the sidelines of a Group of 20 finance officials meeting in India, IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva said on Thursday....

The Bulgarian economist, who has pushed hard for quicker movement on debt relief, said she would travel to Zambia in two weeks, and hoped the African country would become the second nation after Chad to complete a debt treatment process under the Common Framework.

The framework was set up by the Group of 20 major economies and the Paris Club of official creditors in October 2020 to help countries weather the COVID crisis, but it has been plagued by long delays.

U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and other Group of Seven have grown increasingly frustrated about what they see as foot-dragging by China in moving forward on debt treatments for countries seeking help. China, for its part, argues that multilateral institutions should also required to accept reductions in the debt they are owed....

Georgieva first discussed the new roundtable last month after a visit to China, noting it would also include private sector creditors and multilateral institutions such as the IMF and World Bank....CNA

The above will tell the full picture, or almost, about the real western debt traps created by you know who but not telling, and keeping the poor nation poor, and spreading the mischievous narrative that Chinese loans were the cause of debt trap. Look at the last sentence that I highlighted in bold. They have hidden this in the middle of the article. These are the institutions that are the creators of the debt traps of African and other developing countries. They have been hiding under the narrative of Chinese debt trap, as if China was the main cause of the debt trap. 

Chinese loans are very different and very small compare to the years and decades the other institutions have been preying on the debtor nations. For one, infrastructure debt is not debt trap in reality. The infrastructure are real assets that stay in the countries for decades or hundreds of years to benefit the countries economically.  In extreme cases, when countries are exceptionally burdened by debt from World Bank, IMF and other western private institutions, like Sri Lanka, the infrastructure could be turned into a long lease and the country, instead of being a debtor, could become a lease owner, collecting rent. No more debt to talk about but collecting revenue.

The real long term debt are those offered by the world Bank, IMF and private western institutions on spurious and suspicious loans that are hardly assets in nature and charging higher interest rates than Chinese loans. Many developing countries have been caught in these debt traps for ages and unable to free themselves. Outrageously, some of these debts are reparation for colonial rules instead of colonial countries paying compensation for invading, ruling and looting these countries. And many of the loans actually gone into the pockets of corrupt leaders propped up by the West but then disappeared, leaving the countries in debt.

Now the liars and bandits are dragging China into it, wanting China to write off debt but not theirs or wanting China to share their dubious debt.

The real devils and demons of debt trap cannot hide themselves anymore. Please tell the full story of the debt the poor nations owe to them.

PS. 'France invaded Algeria – then a hub of piracy ruled by an Ottoman satrap – in 1830, and spent the next century settling the North African nation with hundreds of thousands of white Europeans. Muslim rebellions were quashed, and French forces tortured, murdered, and displaced hundreds of thousands of locals. The occupation ended in 1962 only after up to 1.5 million Algerians had been killed in an eight-year war of independence.

“I don't have to apologize” for these events, Macron told the magazine. “There was a war. Apologies or no apologies, that doesn't fix anything.”'

Don't apologise is one thing.  Would France return the hundreds of millions of reparations paid by Algeria as compensation for colonisation?