Sustainable lending to the low-income countries

The World Bank and International Monetary Fund are pursuing policies to help low income countries to achieve their Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) without creating future debt problems. The aim is to prevent renewed indebtedness of these countries after the debt forgiveness and debt reduction that have been implemented in the last few years.

The member countries of the OECD Export Credit Group are the main financiers of the international financial institutions. The creditor countries have been invited to carry their responsibility to ensure that the indebtedness remains at a sustainable level. Therefore the OECD has agreed Principles and Guidelines on how to promote sustainable lending practises in the provision of official export credits to low-income countries.

In practise this means that Finnvera and other export credit agencies of the OECD countries need to take into account the restrictions that IMF and IBRD set as regards new debt to public sector borrowers. Many low income countries can only exceptionally utilize export credits with market terms for their public sector projects.

Finnvera’s country risk advisers will provide further information on Finnvera’s risk-taking in export transactions to the low-income countries.

Country-classification-and-map

The Principles and Guidelines to promote sustainable lending as well as the up-to-date list of low-income countries is available at the OECD website .