China in the driver's seat amid calls for Africa debt relief

Washington

SUPPORT is growing for debt relief to help the world's poorest, indebted nations - most of them in Africa - confront the economic havoc wreaked by Covid-19. But there is one big question mark: China.

A two-decade lending spree has propelled China to the top of Africa's creditor list and any comprehensive debt deal, including write-offs, would require Beijing to take a leading role and swallow losses, analysts say.

"China is in the driver's seat," said Scott Morris, a senior fellow at the Center for Global Development (CGD), a Washington think tank. "But this is going to require real pain for creditors, and I'm not sure they've come to terms with that."

Beijing is likely to endorse a temporary freeze on debt payments by African countries as part of an expected agreement by the Group of 20 (G20) major economies this week, two sources familiar with the process told Reuters.

Debt relief is the obvious next step but China is unlikely to lead the charge on such a move, analysts say, despite the potential opportunity to burnish its soft power credentials.

China's Foreign Ministry and the China International Development Cooperation Agency did not respond to Reuters'requests for comment.

Unlike major Western countries that granted debt relief in the past, a large part of China's debt to Africa carries commercial terms. And China itself is still an emerging economy with per capita income of US$10,153 in 2019, below the average of US$45,447 for the top seven major economies, according to data from the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

"China is still a rising power, and it is only a recent ... entrant as a major financial partner in Africa," said Yunnan Chen of the Overseas Development Institute (ODI), a London think tank. "It also needs to make financial and economic returns on its investments. We are very unlikely to see direct loan forgiveness for a substantial bulk of loans."

With its own economy expected to contract for the first time in three decades, China has signalled little appetite to go beyond its well-worn playbook of bilateral negotiations with debt-distressed partners.

"We can't answer to every debt relief request without detailed analysis," said He Haifeng, director of the Institute of Financial Policy at the Chinese Academy of Social Science, a government think tank.

Wealthy governments watching their own economies lurch towards recession are unlikely to pour significant resources into debt relief if they think the money will indirectly support Chinese creditors, analysts say.

With around 12,500 Covid-19 cases to date, Africa accounts for a small fraction of the more than 1.7 million infections globally.

Nonetheless, African countries have taken a disproportionate hit due to plummeting oil and commodity prices and weaker currencies, which ramp up external debt servicing costs.

Their economies are expected to contract sharply this year and could lose 20 million jobs.

African finance ministers are calling for a US$100 billion stimulus package, of which US$44 billion would come from not servicing debt - bilateral, multilateral or commercial. They want some debt owed by Africa's poorest nations cancelled and the remainder converted into long-term, low-interest loans.

China's government, banks and companies lent some US$143 billion to Africa between 2000 and 2017, much of it for large-scale infrastructure projects, according to data from Johns Hopkins University. By some estimates, Chinese lending now dwarfs World Bank loans in Africa. The ODI estimates lending from China makes up 33 per cent of external debt service in Kenya, 17 per cent in Ethiopia and 10 per cent in Nigeria.

Terms of Chinese lending have generally been favourable, though a CGD study published earlier this month found they were consistently harder than World Bank terms, particularly for the poorest countries. Chinese institutions offered fewer grants; grace periods on loans were shorter, and the weighted mean interest rate was higher - 4.14 per cent compared to the World Bank's 2.1 per cent.

While China has played a highly publicised role in Africa's fight against the pandemic - with billionaire Jack Ma dispatching planeloads of medical equipment - there's little indication of a similar grand gesture on debt. REUTERS