Book contents
- Sovereign Debt Crises
- Sovereign Debt Crises
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Contributors
- 1 Introduction
- 2 Managing Public Debt Crisis in Argentina
- 3 Why Developing Countries Should Not Incur Foreign Debt
- 4 Ecuador’s 2008–2009 Debt Restructuring
- 5 Greece: An EU-Inflicted Catastrophe*
- 6 Grenada: A Small Island Developing State Needs New Ways Out of Its Debt
- 7 Iceland: A Human Rights-Sensitive Approach to Deal with Financial Crises
- 8 Indonesia’s 1997–1998 Economic Crisis
- 9 The Irish Sovereign Debt Crisis Post-2009
- 10 Short-Term Capital Controls and Malaysia’s Fast Recovery after the East-Asian Crisis
- 11 Sovereign Debt
- 12 Portugal’s Austerity Bailout
- 13 Don’t Waste a Serious Crisis*
- 14 Lessons from South Korea
- 15 The Spanish Crisis
- 16 Conclusions
- Index
6 - Grenada: A Small Island Developing State Needs New Ways Out of Its Debt
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 16 November 2017
- Sovereign Debt Crises
- Sovereign Debt Crises
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Contributors
- 1 Introduction
- 2 Managing Public Debt Crisis in Argentina
- 3 Why Developing Countries Should Not Incur Foreign Debt
- 4 Ecuador’s 2008–2009 Debt Restructuring
- 5 Greece: An EU-Inflicted Catastrophe*
- 6 Grenada: A Small Island Developing State Needs New Ways Out of Its Debt
- 7 Iceland: A Human Rights-Sensitive Approach to Deal with Financial Crises
- 8 Indonesia’s 1997–1998 Economic Crisis
- 9 The Irish Sovereign Debt Crisis Post-2009
- 10 Short-Term Capital Controls and Malaysia’s Fast Recovery after the East-Asian Crisis
- 11 Sovereign Debt
- 12 Portugal’s Austerity Bailout
- 13 Don’t Waste a Serious Crisis*
- 14 Lessons from South Korea
- 15 The Spanish Crisis
- 16 Conclusions
- Index
Summary
Grenada is a small island developing state (SIDS) in the Eastern Caribbean which has been driven into over-indebtedness by a combination of structural weaknesses and external shocks. The small size of the island’s economy and its limited diversification met with the shocks of the cessation of the EU banana trade preferences and hurricane Ivan in 2004. Due to these factors, Grenada has hardly ever had an unproblematic external debt level throughout its recent history. It defaulted, however, only in 2013 after long and futile attempts to keep its debt service payments on schedule. Grenada is indebted to multilateral, private and official bilateral creditors. Bilaterals outside the Paris Club and private bondholders agreed to reduce their claims on Grenada after lengthy negotiations. Multilaterals insisted on their ‘exempt creditor status’ and refused to contribute to debt relief. The Paris Club finally added insult to injury, when it amended its rescheduling without any debt reduction with a ‘comparability of treatment’ clause and a mock ‘hurricane clause’. The concessions reached leave Grenada with a debt stock of more than 90 per cent of GDP and it takes again over-optimistic growth assumptions by the IMF to presume that the country has left its debt crisis behind. A remarkable development, though, was the broad and forceful participation of civil society in the debt negotiation process. The interventions of the influential Conference of Churches in Grenada led to a far more balanced economic reform programme than is common among highly indebted countries under pressure from the IMF and other creditors.
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- Sovereign Debt CrisesWhat Have We Learned?, pp. 84 - 102Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2017