China: Belt and Road contracts worth more than $2 trillion
10.10.2023
China announced on Tuesday that its Belt and Road Initiative has accumulated US$2 trillion in contracts globally since 2013, and that no country has fallen into a debt crisis due to its participation in the Belt and Road Initiative. Experts are skeptical about the debt figures, saying the amount is likely to be underestimated.
(Deutsche Welle Chinese website) On Tuesday (October 10), the Chinese government stated at the launch of the white paper “Co-building the Belt and Road Initiative: Major Practices in Building a Community with a Shared Future for Mankind” that new contracts for contracting projects currently signed with partners The total value has reached two trillion US dollars. This amount is roughly equivalent to the size of the economies of Russia or Canada.
According to a white paper issued by China’s State Council, countries participating in the Belt and Road Initiative still owe the Export-Import Bank of China a total of more than US$300 billion. Agence France-Presse quoted an expert as saying that this figure is likely to be an underestimate, but it still reveals the huge debt behind this global infrastructure initiative.
Are poor countries even poorer?
China marks the 10th anniversary of its Belt and Road Initiative this month, but critics have long accused it of luring low-income countries into poverty by offering huge loans that are difficult to repay.debt trap。
The “One Belt, One Road” white paper released on Tuesday mentioned that China’s cumulative turnover of contracted projects in the jointly constructed countries reached US$1.3 trillion. In addition, it also pointed out that “the balance of China Export-Import Bank’s “One Belt, One Road” loans reached RMB 2.2 trillion (approximately US$307.4 billion), covering more than 130 co-building countries, and loan projects have attracted more than US$400 billion in investment and driven more than 2,000 trades. Trillions of dollars”. That is, the loans of all co-building countries are about 307.4 billion U.S. dollars, and the average debt of each country is about 2.4 billion U.S. dollars.
Current Affairs | 01.02.2022
Experts say debt amounts are underestimated
However, the white paper did not detail which countries owe the most debt, nor the repayment interest rates for these countries. Niva Yau, a non-resident fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Global China Hub, believes that while the debt figure is large, it is likely to be an underestimate. “There are other academic research papers that have written about these hidden debts, and they could add up to as much as $800 billion,” Niva Yo said. “We have no information about these projects and we don’t know what these numbers are,” she added. It adds up.”
The Export-Import Bank of China has financed major transportation and energy projects in the Belt and Road Initiative and has links to foreign lending programs from Africa to Central Asia. The white paper states that as of the end of June 2023, the Silk Road Fund established by China for the construction of the “One Belt, One Road” has signed agreements for 75 projects, with a committed investment amount of approximately US$22.04 billion.
China’s State Council on Tuesday praised the Belt and Road Initiative for “bringing tangible benefits” to the co-building countries and stressed that “no country has fallen into a debt crisis because of its participation in the Belt and Road cooperation.” However, many partners are increasingly wary of the costs involved.For exampleItaly, the only developed democracy to sign onto the initiative, said last month it was considering withdrawing from the deal。
Current Affairs | 22.05.2023
Beijing will host the third “Belt and Road” International Cooperation Summit Forum later this month, and the date has not yet been determined. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning said last month: “We welcome countries and partners who are actively participating in the joint construction of the Belt and Road Initiative to come to Beijing to discuss cooperation plans and seek common development.” Russian President Vladimir Putin is expected to attend the forum, This will be his first visit to China since launching the war to invade Ukraine.
(AFP)
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2023-10-10 13:15:34
