Solving the Developing Country Debt Crisis: Brady's New Proposals and the Views of Banking Community

The debt crisis has been with us for a long time - since before 1982. The burden of adjustment is still on the debtor countries. This paper is intended to represent the developments of measures of the U. S. government and banking community to solve the debt crisis. The initial approach - new money plus rescheduling with IMF conditionality - has remained the basic way in which the debt is being handled. In the second phase the U. S. Treasury Baker put stress on the role of the World Bank and the growth-oriented, structual adjustment strategies. The third phase is characterized by the strategy of debt and debt-service reduction, which signaled a reversal of the U. S. position. The test case for the new U. S. initiative proposed by Secretary Brady was Mexico, and the following beneficiaries are the Philippines, Costa Rica, Venezuela, Morocco, and Uruguay so far. Market-oriented measures and privatizations have been adopted and carried out in these countries as well as other debtor countries. But unless social justice, narrowing the income gap is acquired in the Third World, debtors and creditors will continue to muddle through the next decade.departmental bulletin pape