Evolution of the external debt of developing countries between 2000 and 2019
Part 1
An update of the three part series “A new trap of indebtedness of the South to the North” published in September-October 2020.
At the end of the 1990s and the early years of the new millennium, developing countries (DC) were emerging from an unprecedented debt crisis, the “lost decades of development”, which had started in 1982 with Mexico defaulting. Between 1980 and 1999 there had been at least 280 debt restructuring operations.
At the time, faced with the sheer size of the crisis and popular pressure, creditors launched emergency financing or debt relief initiatives. Since 1982, those measures have essentially guaranteed the debt would still be paid for creditors not to be affected by a general suspension of debt payment as had happened in the 1930s.