Emerging countries: the debt crisis is underway

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EDITORIAL. More than half of the so-called “low-income” countries now face the high risk of being unable to repay their creditors.

By Pierre-Antoine Delhommais

FTrue to its reputation as a bearer of bad news, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has not only just revised its global growth outlook downwards for this year (2.8% after 3.4% in 2022), but also deliver, through the voice of its chief economist, Pierre-Olivier Gourinchas, a message that is not really reassuring and even frankly anxiety-provoking. “We are entering a perilous phase where economic growth remains weak compared to its historical values ​​and where financial risks are accentuated, while the problem of inflation is not yet behind us. »

At the heart of its concerns, the “serious secondary effects” on the financial sector of the brutal tightening, for a year, of monetary policies intended to fight against the…