Coronavirus debt relief: why making China pay for Covid-19 won’t help Africa

China, as a member of the G20, has agreed to offer the world’s poorest economies a debt repayment standstill

To insist Beijing should do even more is to risk creating a situation where poor nations have trouble getting loans in future

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A man wears a poster promoting awareness of Covid-19, on the streets of Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso on March 30. Photo: EPA-EFE

Published: 6:40am, 29 Apr 2020Updated: 6:43am, 29 Apr 2020

A coronavirus pandemic is bad enough but, combined with plagues of locusts, it’s an absolute nightmare. But one or both are currently afflicting a lot of countries to which China has been a primary lender in recent years.

Some form of debt relief will help the world’s poorest nations cope but, at the risk of appearing hard-hearted, debt relief or even forgiveness should not be approached lightly.

China, as a member of the G20, has agreed to offer the world’s poorest economies a temporary debt repayment standstill.

Meanwhile, the UN Conference on Trade and Development has called for the cancellation of US$1 trillion of debt owed by developing nations. “The international community should urgently take more steps to relieve the mounting financial pressure that debt payments are exerting on developing countries as they get to grips with the economic shock of Covid-19,” said Unctad secretary general Mukhisa Kituyi.

But decisions on debt relief as they apply to China cannot be linked to any notion that it bears responsibility for the global Covid-19 pandemic. Viruses don’t carry passports.

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