Creditor country regulations and commercial bank lending to developing countries

Ever since the debt crisis of 1982, commercial banks continue to be reluctant in lending to developing countries. It is often argued that regulatory pressures on commercial banks have also contributed to the banks'reduced exposure to developing countries. This paper explores this possibility, focusing particularly on the effect of the Bank for International Settlement (BIS) risk-related capital adequacy regulations and different practices of country risk provisioning in major creditor countries. The main conclusion of the paper is that the BIS capital adequacy regulations may be somewhat less effective than they appear in accomplishing their main goal of controlling the overall riskiness of the international banking system, but that they may be quite effective in decreasing the size of commercial banks'developing country loan portfolios. The paper also discusses how mandated provisioning rules against developing countries are an additional deterrent to increasing bank lending.