G20 recommits to debt relief — but critics say it’s far from enough
The G20 has released a ministerial declaration on debt reaffirming support for its existing debt restructuring program, but critics say the framework’s progress has been too slow.
By Elissa Miolene, Adva Saldinger // 21 October 2025The Group of 20 major economies has released a ministerial declaration on debt — one that reaffirmed support for the G20’s existing debt restructuring program, and committed to strengthening its implementation. It is the first time a declaration on debt has been issued since the COVID-19 pandemic, and the only topic on which finance ministers from all G20 countries — including the United States — reached enough of a consensus for a communiqué. “The G20 continues to play an important role in fostering stability, inclusion, and sustainability in the international system, and we are confident that the work carried forward from this presidency will strengthen our shared efforts to build a more equitable, resilient and prosperous global economy,” said David Masondo, South Africa’s deputy minister of finance, at the World Bank and International Monetary Fund annual meetings last week. At the core of the declaration was a commitment to the Common Framework, the G20’s mechanism for coordinating debt relief among low-income countries. Launched in 2020, the framework was designed to streamline debt restructuring between official and private creditors. But over the last five years, the framework’s progress has been slow, and only a handful of countries — Chad, Ethiopia, Ghana, and Zambia — have gone through the process. Critics said it’s too slow, too limited, and too creditor-friendly, offering little real relief to countries already deep in crisis — and last year, the United Nations Office of the Special Adviser on Africa issued a report that said the framework’s efforts came “too little, too late.” Zambia is often used as the prime example of the framework’s faults: The country’s restructuring process took more than three years after the country’s default, and reportedly cut debt by about $900 million — a fraction of what analysts said was needed. Still, supporters argued the framework deserves more credit than it gets. For the first time, it brought Paris Club and non-Paris Club creditors — including China — together, creating a coordinated process for restructuring low-income countries’ debt. The system, they added, was never meant to wipe the slate clean, but to pair IMF-backed reform programs with tailored debt treatments that create space to repay sustainably, even if that process has proved slower than hoped. “The Common Framework remains the key vehicle through which these kinds of debt restructurings happen,” said Duncan Pieterse, the director-general of the National Treasury of South Africa, at a World Bank press briefing last week. “We are heartened by the progress that the Common Framework has made over the last few years in terms of its ability to resolve these debt restructurings a lot more quickly than was the case with the first few.” But while the finance ministers committed to “further strengthen[ing] the implementation” of the framework in a “predictable, timely, orderly, and coordinated manner,” the declaration offered little new detail — frustrating many across civil society. “We are extremely disappointed to see absolutely nothing new in the G20's Declaration on debt today,” wrote Iolanda Fresnillo, Eurodad’s policy and advocacy manager, in a statement. “It reiterates limited and ineffective tools like the Common Framework for Debt Treatments instead of supporting real reforms at a more inclusive forum — the UN.” Just before the declaration was released, some 160 civil society organizations published a letter to South African President Cyril Ramaphosa, criticizing the slow pace of “demonstrable progress” during the country’s G20 presidency. The organizations pushed South Africa to take a “far stronger” position on the debt crisis, noting that “radical reform” was critical for deeper, faster debt relief, and called for commitments made during the fourth Financing for Development conference in Sevilla, Spain, to be turned into action. “While this year's G20 has been put forward as an ‘African G20’, there is no evidence that any progress has been made on the debt crisis facing Africa and many other countries worldwide during the South African presidency,” the letter read. Mavis Owusu-Gyamfi, the president of the Accra-based African Center for Economic Transformation, had a similar take: Despite ambitious commitments on debt by South Africa and Brazil — the country that held the G20 presidency last year — progress has been slower than most had hoped for. “We’ve discussed and discussed and discussed. We’ve not gotten anywhere,” said Owusu-Gyamfi. “Let’s give the [International Monetary] Fund credit. They’ve made some progress. But the progress is not far enough.” Despite that, the G20’s finance ministers framed the declaration as one more step toward solving the global debt crisis, building on actions taken by the bloc over the last five years. The growing costs of debt Last year, global public debt topped $100 trillion for the first time. Most of that burden sits with wealthy nations, but developing countries are paying far more to borrow — with interest rates in parts of Asia, Latin America, and Africa reaching up to three times those of the United States. “Debt is important, debt is a good thing, and debt can be used for growth. However, at the moment, debt is far too expensive,” said Hannah Ryder, the chief executive officer of consulting firm Development Reimagined, speaking to Devex on the sidelines of the World Bank annual meetings. “The G20 needs to take actions — and they can take actions — to reduce the cost of debt, and especially debt servicing.” Ryder mentioned Egypt, a country that spends more than half its national budget on servicing its debt. The North African country is not alone: Across the continent, 32 African nations now spend more on external debt than they do on health care, while 25 spend more on external debt than on education, according to the ONE Campaign. “Often, people forget that by 2050, 1 in 4 people walking this earth will be of African descent,” Owusu-Gyamfi told Devex. “If Africa is not investing in the development of its people, in creating opportunities for its people, in the development of the continent, the world is in trouble.” Over the last several years, borrowing costs have also pushed more than 60 governments to spend at least 10% of their revenue on interest payments alone — a proportion that in Africa rises to an average of 17%. An analysis from ACET recently found that capping debt servicing costs to 5% of government revenue could save more than $320 billion in revenue across the continent, and in a country like Egypt, that would mean enough money to both eliminate maternal mortality and provide nationwide access to clean water. “This should be giving ministries of finance all around the world anxiety,” said Eric Pelofsky, the vice president of global economic recovery at The Rockefeller Foundation. “The important thing is this is not simply that the global south burns down and nobody cares. This is something that would affect the global economy.” It’s the reason why South Africa, which leads this year’s G20, made tackling the world’s debt crisis a pillar of its presidency — and why in the debt declaration, finance ministers called for more international efforts to support borrowing countries. The ministers also urged the use of crisis-resilient debt clauses, which allow countries to temporarily suspend payments after a climate shock; and nodded to the work of the Global Sovereign Debt Roundtable, a platform co-chaired by the IMF, World Bank, and G20 presidency that brings together creditors and borrowers to speed up debt restructuring and improve coordination under the G20’s Common Framework. “The G20 understands that if we don’t fix the global debt problem, we’re not going to return to strong economic growth. We’re going to see rising food and fuel prices, and of course more and more developing countries will go into crisis,” said Eric LeCompte, the executive director of Jubilee USA Network. “We see the promise of the G20 coming together at this time and reiterating their commitment to dealing with debt, and that’s incredibly important. But we need the G20 to do more.” The work ahead That’s not to say the G20’s work is complete, or that the bloc is sold on continuing as usual with the Common Framework. Earlier this year, South Africa created an Africa Expert Panel to compile recommendations on debt relief, with a report on the topic expected at the G20 Leaders’ Summit — a two-day gathering of world leaders, finance ministers, and government heads next month. “As long as we put those different solutions on the table in front of the G20, there’s an opportunity for change,” said Development Reimagined’s Ryder, who also serves as a member of the expert panel. “And I think that, for me, would be a good measure of success.” Daouda Sembene, another member of that expert panel, foreshadowed some of those solutions at the Devex Impact House on the sidelines of the World Bank-IMF annual meetings last week. He focused on incentives to accelerate action in the debt restructuring process, recommending that countries going through the Common Framework should be granted an automatic suspension on their debt repayments. “[That] at least pushes the creditors to be incentivized to come up with a solution,” said Sembene, who also leads the global development advisory firm AfriCatalyst. “Otherwise, the process drags on.” Still, the panel’s recommendations will be just the latest of several reports unveiled by such groups, from the Vatican-backed Jubilee Commission Debt Relief Report in June of this year, to one released by the United Nations’ Secretary-General’s Expert Group on Debt the same month. The real question, explained Sembene, is whether those recommendations will materialize — and whether South Africa’s push for debt relief will result in real change. “South Africa may have done everything under their control to bring those issues to light, but we all know that G20 is a consensus-making body,” said Sembene. “Nothing will take place, and nothing will be decided, without all members agreeing.” And that, some civil society leaders told Devex, is why the G20 declaration may have been weaker than some had hoped. “South Africa has come up with a communique which takes us half a step forward, or one step forward, but doesn't move us 10 steps forward like we had hoped,” Owusu-Gyamfi said. “But at the same time that the G20 has come up with this communique, President Ramaphosa is committed to taking the action from the commissioners that he put together on debt — and taking their actions way beyond the G20.” Anna Gawel contributed reporting.
The Group of 20 major economies has released a ministerial declaration on debt — one that reaffirmed support for the G20’s existing debt restructuring program, and committed to strengthening its implementation.
It is the first time a declaration on debt has been issued since the COVID-19 pandemic, and the only topic on which finance ministers from all G20 countries — including the United States — reached enough of a consensus for a communiqué.
“The G20 continues to play an important role in fostering stability, inclusion, and sustainability in the international system, and we are confident that the work carried forward from this presidency will strengthen our shared efforts to build a more equitable, resilient and prosperous global economy,” said David Masondo, South Africa’s deputy minister of finance, at the World Bank and International Monetary Fund annual meetings last week.
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Elissa Miolene reports on USAID and the U.S. government at Devex. She previously covered education at The San Jose Mercury News, and has written for outlets like The Wall Street Journal, San Francisco Chronicle, Washingtonian magazine, among others. Before shifting to journalism, Elissa led communications for humanitarian agencies in the United States, East Africa, and South Asia.
Adva Saldinger is a Senior Reporter at Devex where she covers development finance, as well as U.S. foreign aid policy. Adva explores the role the private sector and private capital play in development and authors the weekly Devex Invested newsletter bringing the latest news on the role of business and finance in addressing global challenges. A journalist with more than 10 years of experience, she has worked at several newspapers in the U.S. and lived in both Ghana and South Africa.