Daniel Munevar

This paper is WILD:

“Nestlé’s entry into LMIC formula markets caused about 212,000 infant deaths per year among mothers without clean water access… and has led to approximately 10.9 million excess infant deaths between 1960 and 2015.” www.nber.org/system/files...

Development and Climate Finance Targets: The Worst of All Worlds Last week, the UN Foundation and the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs kindly asked me to talk at an informal session on the coherence between development and climate finance. I learned a l...

A blog on Development and Climate Finance Targets: The Worst of All Worlds.

www.cgdev.org/blog/develop...

TLDR: We really need climate finance agreements to have targets for adaptation and development finance in the poorest countries ....

Die Hard is about a (prospective) bondholder claiming coupon and principal payments on (now obsolete) debt securities.

Die Hard is a sovereign finance movie.

Had a request to look at some stuff in the latest WEO. For fun, I compiled the countries with the highest projected interest to government revenue ratios in 2025. Egypt and Pakistan are on a league of their own, 6 of the top 10 are African countries, and notable presence of India in this group 🧐

World Bank Group Announces Record $100 Billion IDA Replenishment The World Bank Group and partner governments have mobilized a record replenishment to the International Development Association (IDA), the world’s largest source of development finance for low-income ...

IDA reaches $100 B replenishment which should allow it to sustain current program levels around $33-$34 B a year in low cost financing. (1/3)

www.worldbank.org/en/news/pres...

Ivory Coast turns to World Bank to replace costly debt Swap deal to buy back bonds issued in January comes as African borrowers struggle under expensive debt burdens

Talking with the FT about the Ivory Coast / World Bank swap deal. Couple of good things on this one. Managed to drive down intermediation costs by side stepping SPV structure and allowed the country to allocate proceeds from transaction. on.ft.com/3BhkuzW

a man in a suit and tie is running down a sidewalk with the words let me in written on it . ALT: a man in a suit and tie is running down a sidewalk with the words let me in written on it .

This IMF Independent Evaluation Office sounds VERY promising. Who could have thought that side stepping rules for large loans due political interference of large shareholders was a problem? 😉

www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

Interesting analysis of the relationship between external public debt service and public expenditures. Expenditure in areas such as agriculture, environment and education tends to decrease when debt service goes up (with the caveat that the analysis doesn't mean to establish a causal relationship).

Net negative transfers on external public debt in middle and low-income countries continued in 2023. Public sectors in these countries paid more to creditors than they received in fresh funding. Multilaterals are providing net positive flows, while private creditors continue to drain resources.

International Debt Report The World Bank’s International Debt Report features external debt statistics and analysis for low- and middle-income countries and information on new bond issuance in international capital markets.

Christmas has arrived early for the debt community with the release of the World Bank International Debt Report 2024 🎅

After a quick scan (still have to go through the data), two things caught my attention 🧵

www.worldbank.org/en/programs/....

An additional element of interest is the role of the IADB. Maybe is their requirements that make it better/cheape to structure as a loan? What is their cost of opportunity vs providing an outright loan? Also interesting role of EIB 👀

Barbados completes world first debt swap for climate resilience Barbados has completed the world's first 'debt-for-climate' swap aimed at raising money to help the Caribbean island build resilience in its water systems to the damaging effects of climate change.

Another debt swap backed by a loan instead of a bond issuance. Something I really like about this transaction is that secures long-term funding in local currency, reducing costs while improving resilience to external shocks www.reuters.com/business/env...

Fifty. Six. Percent. Increase. In. The deaths. Of. Pregnant. People.

Distressed LICs need debt relief, not more new debt - OMFIF IMF emphasis on liquidity strains is off target

1/6
After reading Kevin Gallagher and Mark Sobel's new piece on debt relief, I note that I am also reading Martin Daunton's very interesting new book in which, early in the book, he discusses how a US declaration of non-intervention in...

www.omfif.org/2024/11/dist...

Great overview of status and main characteristics of the wave of recent debt restructurings by JPM. Useful to think about comparisons with historical benchmarks. In most cases NPV relief is below historical median of 38-42%. A harbinger of serial restructurings?

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To understand global south anger at the COP29 climate finance goal it's crucial to understand two key numbers.

1️⃣ "At least" $300bn/year - developed nations agreed to "take the lead" in mobilising this for developing countries

2️⃣ $1.3tn/year - a wider, vaguer goal

They sound pretty big! But...

IMF surcharges reached US$ 1.9 billion, equivalent to 53% of lending income and 39% of operational income in FY2024. Mind you, these profits were made from the most vulnerable borrowers of the Fund. Unfortunately, the recent reform failed to address the structural problems of the policy.

Public statisticians specialised in development assistance and climate finance accounting gimmicks looking at the COP29 text.

Not representative but best coverage I saw was yours and @joshgabbatiss.bsky.social in here. Nothing of value in X. Coverage in media mostly came after the agreement (I.e not a lot of info on negotiations).

Obsessing over quantity and forgetting quality of climate finance is the Baku COP’s biggest failure. Not that $300bn is too low to meet demands for action and justice (though that’s true). It’s that the world’s poorest & least responsible for climate change will be robbed by it.

Rule of law*.
*Conditions and terms apply.

Price aggregator sites meant to check for discounts have that info 😀

The co-facilitators of the UN Financing for Development Conference have just published an elements paper based on over 300 contributions. Important document as it sets the blueprint fro the conference next year in Spain. financing.desa.un.org/sites/defaul...

The problem with external debt financing of investment in adaptation is the currency mismatch. Projects with a lot of local content which will not expand export capacity. A recipe for chronic indebtedness and financial fragility.

Guidance Note On The Financing Assurances And Sovereign Arrears Policies And The Fund's Role In Debt Restructurings Under its Articles of Agreement, the Fund may only provide financing to assist members to resolve their balance of payments problems and restore medium-term external viability and may only do so under...

A thread with interesting tidbits from the new IMF guidance note on sovereign restructurings, as I read along🧵⤵️

www.imf.org/en/Publicati...

Wonder if it also has to do with risk management. I would assume that the guarantees reduce the equity cost of the loan making it attractive for banks to simply warehouse it.

For those negotiating in Baku on the #NCQG climate finance goal

@edwickstead.bsky.social and I have calculated two new scenarios in our @cgdev.bsky.social model of baselines relating to multilateral development banks and the latest negotiating text

1/5

Quite interesting that the last two swap deals have been funded through loans instead of bond issuances. Is this a sign of lack of appetite from the market?

Nothing that some hard currency debt financing on critical infrastructure for adaptation with no substantial returns cannot make worse… sorry, I meant fix 🤣