Old shackles, rising new masters? On Southern debt today

Financing development effectively for the people is increasingly important today amid rising inequalities, corporate concentration, stagnant world economic growth and climate crisis. Many of non-debt finance sources—from aid to foreign direct investment to domestic resource mobilisation—face issues in quantity and, importantly, in quality and effects. Southern debt, with its own history of crises, has been considered an "important tool" to supposedly achieve development. Trends and continuing legacies of unsustainable debts in the global South prevail, amid continuing people's concerns on its impacts on economic rights.

Contents

• Debt in the South
• Old shackles: Who are the main creditors?
• Old shackles: Debt and the commodity-dependence trap
• Continuing people's concerns
• Structural transformations as requisites for people's development