The paper presents the policymakers perspective on the reforms undertaken to manage states debt and ensure solvency. While the sustained high growth rates of the Indian economy played a part in alleviating the interest burden on debt and ensuring that the debt does not grow in an explosive...

Sovereign credit guarantees and government on-lending can catalyze private sector investment and fulfill specific policy objectives. However, contingent liabilities stemming from guarantees and contingent assets stemming from on-lending expose governments to risk. Prudent risk management,...

This paper takes a hard look at the experience with official intervention in sovereign debt crises, focusing on debt crises of the 1980s, Russia in 1998, Argentina in 2001, and Greece in 2010. Based on the track record, the authors argue that in situations where countries face a solvency...

Governments raise funds to meet their financing needs using a range of fixed income securities and loans with different maturities, interest rates, and exchange rate structures. Public debt managers need to consider various policy objectives when deciding on the structure of the public liability...

Foreign investors are increasingly important participants in the local currency sovereign bond markets of developing countries. This note provides context on the overall growth of local currency sovereign debt markets in emerging markets and the growth of foreign investor participation in these...

This paper analyzes the status of public debt management performance in 17 small states through the findings of the Debt Management Performance Assessment reports. Empirical evidence indicates that the higher the quality of a country's policies and institutions, the better is its capacity to...

Sub-Saharan African countries as a group showed a considerable reduction in public and external indebtedness in the early 2000s as a result of debt relief programs, higher economic growth, and improved fiscal management for some countries. More recently, however, vulnerabilities in some...

This paper introduces a new data set on the stock and structure of domestic debt in 36 low-income countries over the period 1971-2011. It characterizes the recent trends regarding the do-mestic public debt of low-income countries and explores the relevance of different arguments put forward on...

Countries with high debt exposure are vulnerable to economic and financial shocks that could lead to sovereign defaults. This paper develops a methodology to identify countries that are at risk of debt default based on four elements of debt vulnerability. These elements capture the different...

More than 20 developing countries do not publish any data on their sovereign debt. In those that do disclose data, public debt statistics usually do not comply with international standards in terms of coverage and definitions. Some information can be deduced through indirect disclosure of debt...