G20 emergency meeting held online, poor countries were given great relief

G20 finance ministers and central bank governors have agreed to suspend payment of debt services to poor countries until 2021.

According to Saudi media, the meeting has extended the previous decision to suspend the payment. The emergency meeting was held online under the chairmanship of Saudi Arabia, at the end of which a joint statement was issued.

The statement said further steps would be needed to resolve the debt problem, with each country requiring a special deal to suspend payment of debt services.

The meeting noted that the scale of the Corona crisis is extraordinary and that debt is causing a lot of problems, with many low-income countries having a bleak future. The G20 finance ministers assured that they were implementing a program to suspend payment of loan services and would continue to do so.

The meeting called on lending countries to show full transparency, and said action on loan services would be taken at the request of the borrowing country. According to the statement, the basic principles of the said relief will be decided by the lending institutions and a clear system of debt distribution will also be devised.

The Debt Service Suspension Initiative (DSSI) was announced in April during the early days of the epidemic in Europe.