ABSTRACT
Awareness of the global debt problem started in the late 1980s. Debts were often incurred by corrupt regimes, with their successors still having to pay. But many debtor governments could not repay – all they could do was pay the interest, merely “servicing the debt”. Interest payments from the poor countries to the rich outweighed development assistance from rich to poor. Since the late 1990s, much debt has been cancelled or rescheduled on relatively generous terms. It is a step forward.
