Does the BRI lead to 'debt trap'?
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E-mail China.org.cn, October 18, 2023
Q: Has the Belt and Road Initiative raised some countries' debt burdens, pushing them into the so-called "debt trap"?
A: My answer is no. As we know, infrastructure projects under the Belt and Road Initiative are characterized by large up-front investments and long construction periods. So, it is obviously a biased approach to deny its long-term gains just because of the absence of short-term profits. Western commercial creditors and multilateral agencies are indeed the largest creditors of developing countries. According to estimates by the World Bank in 2022, in the next seven years, 67% of low- and middle-income countries' repayment of previous debts will go to Western commercial creditors and multilateral agencies. So, it defies logic to correlate the "debt trap" to the Belt and Road Initiative.
