During a short ceremony in the German development ministry state secretary Thomas Silberhorn in representation of the German government received 185 institutional logos of organisations, which support the G20 call for a fair and efficient debt workout mechanism on November 9th 2016. Geoffrey Chongo of the Jesuit Centre for Theological Reflection in Lusaka (Zambia) and Protestant Aid Agency Brot für die Welt‘s director Cornelia Füllkrug-Weitzel urged the development ministry to be aware of the rising debt levels in the global South. Zambia is one of the countries, where debt levels in their relations to economic capacities are still moderate but show a dramatic rise over the last three years. Füllkrug-Weitzel pointed to the parallels between these present tendencies and the very similar political and economic environment of low global interest rates, huge infrastructure investment needs and deficient regulation of international capital flows, which in the 1970s and 1980s led to the “debt crisis of the third world”.
The next big events in the Debt20 campaign will be organized around the G20 Finance Ministers’ meeting on March 17th and 18th 2017 in Baden-Baden and the heads of state and government summit on July 7th through 9th in Hamburg.
