{"id":135677,"date":"2023-07-17T17:04:36","date_gmt":"2023-07-18T00:04:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=135677"},"modified":"2023-07-17T17:04:36","modified_gmt":"2023-07-18T00:04:36","slug":"us-treasury-secretary-hopes-debt-treatments-for-sri-lanka-could-be-finalised-quickly","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2023\/07\/17\/us-treasury-secretary-hopes-debt-treatments-for-sri-lanka-could-be-finalised-quickly\/","title":{"rendered":"US Treasury Secretary hopes debt treatments for Sri Lanka could be finalised quickly"},"content":{"rendered":"

Courtesy Adaderana<\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n\n\n

U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said on Sunday she was eager\u201d to work with China on areas of mutual interest, including debt restructurings for poorer countries, and that multilateral development banks needed reforms before capital increases could be considered.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At a press conference before a meeting of Group of 20 finance ministers and central bankers in India, Yellen said her visit to Beijing last week helped put the U.S.-China relationship on surer footing\u201d and that the world\u2019s two biggest economies had an obligation to the world to cooperate on areas of mutual concern\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There is much more work to do. But I believe this trip was an important start,\u201d Yellen said. I am eager to build on the groundwork that we laid in Beijing to mobilise further action.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Concerns remain about China\u2019s unfair trade practices, which prompted Washington to impose tariffs on Beijing. They really have not been addressed,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

U.S. corporations want to see an environment where they could invest and thrive in China\u201d, Yellen said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Washington will continue to cut off Russia\u2019s access to military equipment and technologies that Moscow needs in the invasion of Ukraine, Yellen said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of our core goals this year is to combat Russia\u2019s efforts to evade our sanctions. Our coalition is building on the actions we\u2019ve taken in recent months to crack down on these efforts,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

India, which chairs the G20 this year, has sought a largely neutral stance on the war, generally declining to blame Russia for the invasion Moscow launched in February last year, urging a diplomatic solution and sharply boosting its purchases of Russian oil even as Western nations seek to squeeze Moscow.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yellen said she would continue to push hard at the G20 meeting, in Gandhinagar in the northwestern Indian state of Gujarat, for full and timely participation of all bilateral official creditors on pending debt restructurings\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She said she discussed Zambia\u2019s restructuring with her Chinese counterparts and, although it took too long to negotiate, differences were overcome.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We should apply the common principles we agreed to in Zambia\u2019s case in other cases \u2013 rather than starting at zero every time. And we must go faster,\u201d Yellen said, adding she hoped debt treatments for Sri Lanka and Ghana could be finalised quickly so the International Monetary Fund (IMF) could move forward with initial loan programme reviews this fall.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She said a debt restructuring user guide\u201d was needed for borrowing countries and other stakeholders to provide clarity about the process.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yellen said the IMF\u2019s Poverty Reduction and Growth trust, which provides zero-interest loans to the world\u2019s poorest countries, needed to be put on sounder financial footing. The U.S. Treasury is ready to assist the IMF to consider options for this, including using internal fund resources, she said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018BETTER BANKS\u2019
Yellen also laid out a number of next steps for the evolution of the World Bank and other multilateral development banks, but said that any exploration of capital increases for the institutions can only be considered after implementing reforms aimed at expanding their role beyond poverty reduction to tackle global challenges such as climate change and pandemics.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We should build better banks, not just bigger banks,\u201d Yellen said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She repeated her estimate that multilateral development banks could collectively boost lending by $200 billion over a decade from internal resources through balance sheet reforms now being implemented or considered. They could boost this further by implementing recommendations from last year\u2019s G20 Capital Adequacy Framework report, she said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Among other World Bank reform steps, Yellen said she was pushing for a new set of principles that would allow the targeted use\u201d of the bank\u2019s concessional financing for global challenges, including climate change and measures to boost such resources.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She said she would like the World Bank to explore options for lending to sub-sovereign and supra-sovereign borrowers like the COVAX vaccine initiative.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yellen said the United States was committed to implementing a global corporate minimum tax deal reached in 2021 despite the lack of action by the U.S. Congress to do so. She said negotiations on technical details of the deal\u2019s Pillar 1 – reallocation of taxing rights on large multinationals including big technology firms – were very close\u201d to completion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Source: Reuters<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

–Agencies<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Courtesy Adaderana U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said on Sunday she was eager\u201d to work with China on areas of mutual interest, including debt restructurings for poorer countries, and that multilateral development banks needed reforms before capital increases could be considered. At a press conference before a meeting of Group of 20 finance ministers and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[193],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-135677","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-imf-bailout-package"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/135677","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=135677"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/135677\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=135677"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=135677"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=135677"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}