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India's G20 presidency comes as its South Asian neighbours Sri
Lanka, Bangladesh and Pakistan are seeking urgent IMF funds due
to an economic slowdown caused by the COVID-19 pandemic and the
Russia-Ukraine war.
China, the world's largest bilateral creditor, urged the group
of big economies on Friday to conduct a fair, objective and
in-depth analysis of the causes of global debt issues as clamour
grows for lenders to take a large haircut, or accept losses, on
loans.
"On debt restructuring, while there are still some
disagreements, we now have the global sovereign debt roundtable
with consideration of all public and private creditors," IMF
Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva told reporters after
chairing the roundtable with Indian Finance Minister Nirmala
Sitharaman.
"We just finished a session in which it was clear that there is
a commitment to bridge differences for the benefit of
countries."
U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said there were no
"deliverables" from the meeting, which was mostly
organisational.
Further discussions of the panel, which includes major bilateral
creditors including China, India and the G7 countries, several
debtor countries, are planned around the time of the IMF and
World Bank spring meetings in April.
"We certainly had that agreement that this is a useful forum,"
Yellen told Reuters in an interview. "We look forward to
participating in it."
CRYPTO RESTRICTIONS
Apart from restructuring debt, regulating cryptocurrencies is
another priority area for India, which Georgieva agreed with.
"We have to differentiate between central bank digital
currencies that are backed by the state and stable coins, and
crypto assets that are privately issued," Georgieva said.
"There has to be very strong push for regulation... if
regulation fails, if you're slow to do it, then we should not
take off the table banning those assets, because they may create
financial stability risk."
Yellen said she had not suggested the "outright banning of
crypto activities, but it was critical to put in place a strong
regulatory framework."
(Reporting by Aftab Ahmed, Sarita Chaganti Singh and Shivangi
Acharya; writing by Sudipto Ganguly; Editing by Krishna N. Das
and William Mallard)
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