"We believe that debt transparency should apply to all debt instruments and countries, regardless of income levels... For certain, borrowing governments should be held responsible for contracting and accumulating burdensome and illegitimate debts. But transparency is just as wanting among lenders. In many instances, the weight of culpability and accountability rests primarily and heavily on lenders."

The message expressed by APMDD at the 13th UNCTAD Debt Management Conference held in Geneva last Dec. 5-7 drove home a key critique of lenders demanding debt transparency on the part of borrowers while conveniently excusing themselves from their own guidelines. 

APMDD was represented by Mae Buenaventura of the Debt Justice Program in the panel that  included Riccardo Boffo, Economist and Financial Analyst (OECD); Yuefen Li, Senior Adviser, South-South Co-operation and Development Finance (South Centre); and Sonja Gibbs, Managing Director and Head of Sustainable Finance, Institute of International Finance (IIF).

The Conference is held regularly as a biennial forum for sharing experiences and exchanging views between governments, international organizations, academia and civil society on debt-related developments in developing countries and on debt management issues in the broader macroeconomic context.

The most recent effort proceeds from the OECD Debt Transparency Initiative which  principles drafted without public consultations by the IIF, a group for the financial industry and composed of the world's largest commercial and investment banks. International financial institutions such as the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, the G20 and the OECD promote these guidelines, ignoring other sets of principles already in place. These include the UNCTAD Principles on Promoting Responsible Sovereign Lending and Borrowing which benefitted from broad participation and consultation with civil society, among them APMDD, media, academe and other stakeholders.  

Read the full intervention here.