Commonwealth Secretary General Patricia Scotland has revealed that Finance Ministers from member states are on October 17, 2019 expected to meet in Washington DC to discuss coordinated interventions to prevent future debt crises.

The meeting, which will be chaired by Cyprus Finance Minister Harris Georgiades, will be held under the theme “Preventing Debt Crises: The Roles of Creditors and Debtors” and will be preceded by sessions for senior Finance Ministry officials and Central Bank Governors from all Commonwealth countries.

According to a statement issued by the Commonwealth Secretariat’s communications division, Monday, Scotland explained that the finance ministers would explore policy options and strategies by which debtor countries could work with creditors to prevent the recurrence of debt crises.

Scotland noted that debt crises, as witnessed recently in Greece and Argentina had capacity to devastate economic growth, increase poverty and derail global agendas such as the UN Sustainable Development Goals and Paris Agreement.

“The meeting comes at a time when global financial institutions, including the International Monetary Fund (IMF) have indicated another global debt crisis could be on the horizon…We have seen the calamitous impact that the Asian debt crisis and the 2008 global financial crisis had in our member countries of, and we know the grave threat that the recurrence of such crises would have on the health of the global economy. So the countries of the Commonwealth are determined to work together to prevent this from happening. The Finance Ministers of our member nations will explore economic policy instruments to curtail rising household debt as well as how technological advancements and other approaches can promote debt transparency for improved risk assessment and debt sustainability,” said Scotland.

At the meeting, Ministers of Finance would also consider ways in which the newly-developed Commonwealth financial technology (fin-tech) toolkit could be deployed to help countries create and share innovative, technology-driven responses to emerging financial challenges.

Meanwhile, the Commonwealth Secretary-General is expected to present findings of the 2019 Commonwealth Economic Development Report, which examined the debt challenges member countries had to tackle in the aftermath of the 2008 global financial crisis.