Debt and Debt Servicing

Singer was an early advocate for addressing the debt problem of the developing countries and the high level of debt servicing that they accumulated in the 1980s. He recalled the history of the debt crisis, which was often forgotten (Singer, 1989m). The immediate cause was the large financial surpluses of the oil producing countries following the two increases in oil prices of the OPEC countries in 1973 and 1979. These financial surpluses flowed into the commercial banks of the US, UK, Switzerland and other industrial countries. Since the industrial countries, taken as a whole, did not have balance of payments deficits, the money was available to be ‘recycled’ into developing countries. The commercial banks pressured the developing countries to take their newly-found resources at low interest rates, with few questions asked. This helped to maintain their growth rates, in spite of deteriorating terms of trade, as a result both of the higher oil prices and of the concomitant reduced growth rates of industrial countries. At the time, this seemed a viable system and everyone (the World Bank, IMF, OPEC and OECD governments and commercial banks) ‘were patting themselves on the back and congratulating themselves on how well the world financial system was coping’.