Kristalina Georgieva, managing director of the International Monetary Fund (left), Ajay Banga, president of the World Bank Group (center) and Mohammed Al-Jadaan, Saudi Arabia’s finance minister, during a panel session at the annual meetings of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank in Marrakesh, Morocco, on Thursday, Oct. 12, 2023.
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Saudi Arabia has defended China from criticism that its infrastructure investments have saddled African and other low income countries with crippling debt, cultivating a reliance on Beijing.
“Maybe it’s time to set the record straight,” Finance Minister Mohammed al-Jadaan said Thursday at the World Bank and International Monetary Fund joint conference in Marrakesh, Morocco.
“China stepped up when people actually shied away from Africa. China built infrastructure that they cannot carry with them to China, it will actually be in Africa. China took the risks, when people didn’t want to take the risks,” he said at a panel discussion on debt reform priorities.
“Instead of actually poking China, I think we should establish here that they did what they needed to do for their own interest, but also to actually help other nations,” al-Jadaan said.
He was speaking on a Marrakesh panel discussion, which included the heads of both the World Bank and International Monetary Fund, as well as Zambia’s Minister of Finance and National Planning, Situmbeko Musokotwane. China was not represented on that panel.
Sovereign debt reforms
China is the world’s largest sovereign debt creditor, partly the result of its largesse stemming from infrastructure projects on its signature Belt and Road Initiative in the last decade. Critics say the massive project forces developing countries to take on high debt while benefiting Chinese firms that are often state owned.
“They are taking a risk — a very high risk — which now they are just collecting on that risk,” al-Jadaan said referring to China. “We should just work with them,…
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