Last week, as coronavirus continued to threaten growth around the world, Moody’s cut India back to Baa3. Fellow rating agencies Fitch and S&P, too, have India just one notch above junk, the Financial Times reported in a commentary. The country is not simply a victim of the havoc wrought by the pandemic. Its problems predate the virus. One crucial weakness is a slow-burning crisis in the financial system: a long history of bad lending decisions and poor governance has contributed to deep pain at banks, shadow banks and mutual funds.

South Korea’s Hyundai Development Co said on Tuesday it wants new terms for its acquisition of Asiana Airlines after the carrier’s already hefty debt burden increased by some $3.8 billion (2.9 billion pounds), Reuters reported. It also called on Asiana’s state-funded creditors to provide support to the long-troubled airline, which must now also contend with the coronavirus pandemic’s crippling impact on travel demand. Hyundai Development and brokerage Mirae Asset Daewoo agreed in December to purchase control of South Korea’s No. 2 airline for about 2.5 trillion won ($2.1 billion).

The head of the International Monetary Fund called on private creditors to join the Group of 20 in providing debt relief for the world’s poorest nations, saying that the alternative to suspension and restructuring is defaults, Bloomberg News reported. A debt-service suspension would provide time for restructuring debt on a case-by-case basis in countries where debt sustainability needs to be restored, Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva said in a webcast with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Tuesday.

Asian companies are at a higher risk of default in the coming quarters than last year, a Reuters analysis of their credit ratios showed, as the coronavirus pandemic has squeezed revenue and made it harder to refinance debt, Reuters reported. One measure of how easily a company can pay interest on outstanding debt - operating profit to interest ratio - fell to the lowest in 11 years at the end of March. The sample took into account companies worth at least $500 million with available data on Refinitiv.

A would-be hub of Indo-Pacific commerce and global tourist gem, Sri Lanka was already struggling to deliver on grand visions before the coronavirus crisis struck the world economy, Bloomberg News reported. The next few months may determine its ability to avert a painful debt restructuring. The South Asian nation is locked in talks with the International Monetary Fund for emergency-financing aid, after its second longer-term program with the fund in less than a decade expired last Tuesday.

Emerging and developing economies will shrink this year for the first time in at least six decades, according to the World Bank, underscoring the mounting economic toll from the coronavirus pandemic as it spreads across the world, the Financial Times reported. The bank’s forecast is that as many as 100m people in the developing world will be tipped into extreme poverty by a projected 2.5 per cent contraction in emerging markets’ gross domestic product, with incomes per capita set to shrink 3.6 per cent globally. The bank defines extreme poverty as an income of less than $1.90 a day.

China is considering using about 200 billion yuan ($28 billion) in proceeds from government bond sales to help address risks in the banking sector, according to people familiar with the matter, Bloomberg News reported. The debt will be part of the total issuance planned by the central government in 2020, and it’ll be used for measures including re-capitalization for medium- and small-sized lenders, the people said, asking not to be named as they’re not authorized to speak publicly.

India should prepare to inject capital into state banks and private-sector lenders need to strengthen their balance sheets, to help bolster the economy against the coronavirus pandemic, according to a senior banker, Bloomberg News reported. “I do believe the government will have to be ready to support public sector banks with capital,” said Uday Kotak, the billionaire founder of Kotak Mahindra Bank Ltd.

A cut in India’s sovereign rating to junk status may threaten the nation’s chances of being added to global bond indexes, steepen the bond yield curve and weaken the rupee, according to UBS Group AG, Bloomberg News reported. The Swiss bank expects S&P Global Ratings and Fitch Ratings to lower their outlook on the rating to negative from stable over the next couple of months, strategists led by Rohit Arora wrote in a June 3 note.

Shenzhen has drafted China’s first personal bankruptcy laws as the southern city tackles broader economic troubles stemming from the coronavirus outbreak, paving the way for others to follow suit, Reuters reported. The rules are intended to give “honest and unfortunate” debtors the chance to escape the mire of debt and make a comeback, the city government said in an official post on Wednesday.