More than 50 of the poorest developing countries are in danger of defaulting on their debt and becoming effectively bankrupt unless the rich world offers urgent assistance, the head of the UN Development Programme has warned, The Guardian reported. Inflation, the energy crisis and rising interest rates are creating conditions where an increasing number of countries are in danger of default, with potentially disastrous impacts on their people, according to Achim Steiner, the UN’s global development chief. “There are currently 54 countries on our list [of those likely to default] and if we have more shocks – interest rates go up further, borrowing becomes more expensive, energy prices, food prices – it becomes almost inevitable that we will see a number of these economies unable to pay,” he said. Speaking at the Cop27 UN climate summit, Steiner said any such default would create further problems for solving the climate crisis. “It certainly will not help [climate] action,” he said. Without measures to help them with debt, he warned, poor countries could not get to grips with the climate crisis. “The issue of debt has now become such a big problem for so many developing economies that dealing with the debt crisis becomes a precondition for actually accelerating climate action,” he said. Read more.
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