PREVIEW
Egypt's finance minister Ahmed Kouchouk will lead a UN-backed Borrowers' Platform for collective debt negotiation but the creditors who matter most will be outside the room
The borrowers’ platform – backed by the UN Conference on Tade and Development (UNCTAD) as secretariat and drawing in developing country finance ministers and central bank governors – responds to the moves in Seville last July, when the United States, EU members and Britain blocked a proposal to move global debt rulemaking out of the G20 and Paris Club framework and into the UN (AC Vol 66 No 15, High hopes, little change). Instead, a Forum on Debt, launched in Seville, for borrower collaboration, seen as the first step towards creating a Paris Club-like group of borrowers (Dispatches, 23/6/25, Stiglitz panel calls for debt relief, as wealthy states block African UN plan).
Out of that came this Borrowers’ Platform which was convened on the margins of the IMF-World Bank Spring Meetings in Washington on 15 April and will be led by Egypt’s Finance Minister Ahmed Kouchouk. Egypt also holds the chair of the UN tax convention, whose mandate is now in its second year.
The UN says that the borrowers’ platform ‘addresses a gap in the international financial system, where developing countries remain underrepresented while creditor coordination has expanded.’ The debt burden facing African and developing countries has become increasingly acute. Developing countries saw their cumulative external debt burden reach US$11.7 trillion in 2024.
It added that ‘creditor-driven coordination and negotiation mechanisms have been insufficiently responsive to borrowers’ collective needs.
The cost of borrowing for African countries rose by a staggering 91% between 2020 and 2024, according to the NGO One in a report published on 15 April, and economists have pointed to the combined effect of high interest rates, combined falling official development assistance to sub-Saharan African countries, which slumped by 26% in 2025, on African public finances.
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