The debt crisis contributed heavily to the social and economic crisis in most developing countries in the 1980s, and its impact on the poorer developing countries continued through the 1990s, affecting their macroeconomic stability and international creditworthiness. The debt overhang stunted investment, growth and world trade, and debt payments crowded out public expenditure on education, health and other social needs. An important contributing factor to the debt crisis was the neglect by many countries of the basic elements of debt management. Active management of public debt is a relatively recent phenomenon in most countries. Before the debt crisis of the 1980s it hardly existed. In the early 1980s, UNCTAD's Debt Management and Financial Analysis System (DMFAS) started its technical cooperation activities in this field, and this paper attempts to present the experiences of the Programme over the years. The paper examines various models for the role, organization and location of a public debt office; the regulatory framework and institutional memory of debt management, involving the creationof procedure manuals for the inter- and intra-institutional tasks and information flows; and the degree of autonomy that a debt office can and should have. The negative impact of neglecting debt management has been widely recognized by now. As a result of this, many countries have sought to improve their basic infrastructure and analytical capacity for debt management, starting with implementation of the best possible organizational set-up for a national debt office
CONTENT
Role of the debt offic -- Location and level of autonomy of the debt office -- Organizational models
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International Institute for Trade and Developement : UNCTAD Collection
