After defaults, liquidity shortages emerge as key challenge

The punishing post-Covid wave of sovereign defaults has finally crested, with the likes of Ghana, Sri Lanka and Zambia concluding years of painful debt reworks. But the International Monetary Fund and others worry that a dangerous liquidity shortfall could take its place in many emerging economies — setting back development, stunting climate change mitigation and fuelling distrust in governments and Western institutions. The issue, and what to do about it when western countries are increasingly loath to send money overseas, is a key topic at the IMF-World Bank autumn meetings taking place in Washington this week. “It’s a challenge in the sense that for many, debt service has grown,