Friday, October 29, 2021 at 14:00-15:30 Vienna time (CEST) 

Presenters
Ms. Dalia Hakura Deputy Division Chief, Strategy, Policy, and Review Department, International Monetary Fund
Mr. Manrique Saenz, Deputy Division Chief, Strategy, Policy and Review Department, International Monetary Fund 

Moderator
Mrs. Barbara Dutzler, Senior Economist, Joint Vienna Institute

The COVID-19 pandemic has pushed sovereign debt to historically high levels. Many low-income countries and some emerging market economies are already in or at high risk of a debt crisis. Defaults, capital flight or forced adjustment of monetary and fiscal policies, however, could seriously undermine the economic recovery.

The webinar will therefore focus on two topics: 

• First, what are the global mechanisms in place to assist low-income countries with debt resolution, and what are first experiences with its role and design? Can diverse needs of different countries be adequately addressed? What are the issues concerning involvement of private sector creditors? The recent developments in the international debt architecture, including the Debt Service Suspension Initiative (DSSI), as well as the G20 Common Framework for Debt Treatments will be presented and analyzed.

• Second, as the COVID-19 crisis is impacting debt sustainability in a diverse group of countries, the webinar will spotlight the steps the IMF has taken to improve its debt sustainability framework for market access countries (MAC DSA). The presentation will discuss the key reforms being introduced to the MAC DSA, including a new probability-based toolkit to assess sovereign risk and debt sustainability, at a critical time of rising debt vulnerabilities due to the pandemic. 

Links:

• Special series on COVID-19 CF Flexibility
• Review of the DSF for MAC, IMF Policy Paper 2021/003