PM's plea to the rich West

Prime Minister Imran Khan while giving an interview to a foreign news agency warned that the coronavirus would devastate the economies of the developing countries and urged the West to write off debts to the world's poor countries. Business Recorder fully appreciates the Prime Minister's concerns and supports measures designed to reduce the burden on developing countries like Pakistan. Unfortunately though, the Prime Minister's proposal is unlikely to be considered at the present moment in time as the coronavirus rages in Western countries, including the US, Italy, France, Spain, Germany and the UK, compelling them to take drastic measures such as lockdowns with economic activity plummeting and hundreds of billions of dollars stimulus packages for their own economies being announced.
Be that as it may, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) launched Highly Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) initiative, consisting of 39 of the poorest nations with 33 in Sub-Saharan Africa, in 1996 following extensive lobbying by the Non-Government Organisations and other bodies that provide debt relief as well as low interest loans to bring down external debt repayments to sustainable levels, enabling them to repay their debt at some future date. However, assistance to any HIPC country is contingent on the debtor government meeting economic management and performance targets as well as undertaking economic and social sector reforms. Around 36 countries have received full or partial debt relief and none of them is in South Asia where a significant number of poor live. Additionally, there has been much criticism with respect to eligibility of countries for HIPC initiative as they mainly consist of small, very poor and heavily indebted countries while countries where the bulk of the world's poor live were ignored; examples include India and Pakistan. Thus one would hope that the World Bank and the IMF revisit their strategy for selecting HIPC countries.
While individual countries are focused entirely on containing the spread of the coronavirus within their territories at present, yet once the crisis abates it is critical for multilaterals as well as bilaterals to revisit their lending strategies and provide a clean slate to the developing countries with the objective of reducing their dependency on loans. This would entail massive reforms and restructuring in the developing world, including Pakistan, with an overwhelming focus on improving governance.