HILARY JOFFE: State’s taboo on foreign borrowing well and truly broken
Loans from overseas institutions are toward ‘developmental objectives’ including just energy transition
06 September 2024 - 05:00
It was a week of foreign borrowing news that would not have been imagined even five years ago. The New Development (Brics) Bank (NDB) approved another billion or two dollars of loans to SA, bringing its total SA portfolio to well over $6bn. And the IMF issued a routine update on SA’s ability to repay its $4.3bn loan from the IMF.
None of it raises eyebrows now. But it was that IMF emergency loan, in the depths of the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020, that broke the democratic government’s long taboo on borrowing from international finance institutions such as the IMF and World Bank...
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