The COVID-19 crisis has revealed many of inherent societal fragilities. As countries in Southern Africa recover from the crisis and mobilize to ensure resilience and sustainability are built into their economies, reinvigorating development finance to invest in renewable energy and energy access will be essential for the people and countries of the Southern African Development […]
A report launched today in a public webinar calls on the G20 to move beyond the Common Framework for Debt Treatments announced last week and require public and private creditors to provide a substantial debt cut to a broad set of low- and middle-income countries, in exchange for a commitment to use the fiscal space for […]
In a new report, the Global Development Policy Center outlines an ambitious new proposal for comprehensive debt relief that includes the private sector and middle-income countries, in an effort to jump start a green and inclusive recovery from COVID-19. The report, summarized below, is produced in partnership with the Heinrich Böll Stiftung and the Centre […]
In a new journal article published in Global Policy, Kevin P. Gallagher, William N, Kring, Haihong Gong, José Antonio Ocampo and Ulrich Volz explain how the protection of the Global Financial Safety Net (GFSN) – comprising the nations’ foreign reserves, central banks’ bilateral swap lines and financial resources of global financial institutions, particularly of the […]
Greening the Recovery in Time of Debt Distress A global debt crisis is looming. Even before COVID-19 swept the world, the International Monetary Fund deemed global public debt burden a high risk for the majority of developing countries – noting that half of the lower-income countries were ‘at high risk of or already in debt […]
For many developing countries, inward foreign direct investment (FDI) fills the local financial gap in the power sector and helps fuel the economy. In the 1980s, China suffered from severe power shortages, as state investment alone could not meet soaring demand for electricity. The government later removed its regulatory barriers and restructured feed-in-tariff schemes to […]
Multilateral financial institutions have pledged to do whatever it takes to enable emerging market and developing countries to fill a $2.5 trillion financing gap to combat COVID-19 and subsequent economic crises. In a new journal article published in World Development, Kevin P. Gallagher, William N. Kring, Thomas Stubbs, Christina Laskaridis and Alexander Kentikelenis compile datasets […]
Global power generation must rapidly decarbonize by mid-century to meet the goal of stabilizing global warming below 2 degrees Celsius. To meet this objective, multilateral development banks (MDBs) have gradually reduced fossil fuel and increased renewable energy financing. Meanwhile, globally active national development finance institutions (DFIs) from Japan and South Korea have continued to finance […]
By Daniel Gay and Kevin P. Gallagher CDP Policy Review No. 10. August 27, 2020. Daniel Gay, an independent consultant working with the United Nations Committee for Development Policy (CDP), and Kevin P. Gallagher, Director of the Global Development Policy Center at Boston University, recently published a policy brief discussing the challenges and risks Bangladesh […]
There is a renewed global push to mobilize resources to meet glaring global infrastructure gaps, the Sustainable Development Goals, the Paris Climate Agreement commitments and generally improve standards of living. A core component of such resource mobilization will be the generation of domestic resources through taxation. Whereas tariffs form a miniscule share of public revenue […]