This webinar deepens the dialogue on the role of Parliaments in transforming debt transparency into debt accountability. It delves into the intersection between debt management, fiscal policy, and Parliaments, and their explicit role in approving borrowing, especially external debt. 

Presenters explore the Parliaments’ constitutional role in establishing legal and regulatory frameworks, authorizing the budget, and holding governments to account. They describe how Parliaments are central actors in efforts to enhance debt accountability, with examples from Kenya to illustrate this dynamic. Watch the webinar.

This webinar discusses how interest and FX risk impact a government's debt portfolio, and offers solutions to manage this risk. It also includes an example of how the Debt office in Malawi manages these risks. Watch the webinar.

The session offers an overview of how the engagement between debt managers and the parliament could be designed and whether parliaments should incorporate this additional policy element into their routine budgetary governance functions. It reflects a collaboration between the World Bank, the Westminster Foundation of Democracy, MEFMI, and WAIFEM. Watch the webinar.

The session introduces novel measures to assess volatility in debt service. It demonstrates how debt service spikes have been often followed by the onset of debt distress episodes. The webinar also discusses the country experience of Jamaica. Watch the webinar.

This webinar covers the key components of a debt contract that are needed to accurately service debt, with a focus on recording and monitoring events that impact cash flows. The recently published World Bank Guidance Note, Managing Sovereign Loans: “A Bottom-up Approach”, serves as a framework for this discussion. Country perspectives from Bhutan and from the World Bank Treasury are shared. Watch the webinar.

This webinar offers an overview of the legal aspects related to effective debt management. It covers topics such as monitoring and disclosure in the context of sovereign credit. The session also examines documentation for sovereign debt obligations and suggests ways in which this can be drafted to ensure that the debtor has legal flexibility in case of unforeseen circumstances. Watch the webinar.

Disclosing fiscal risks is an essential element of fiscal transparency. Identifying, managing, and monitoring fiscal risks arising from public sector entities, sovereign guarantees and PPP is important to reduce a country’s vulnerability. These are factors that can cause fiscal outcomes to differ from expectations, and contribute to macroeconomic, fiscal, and financial shocks.

This webinar for government risk managers discusses how to identify and classify the key types of debt-related Contingent Liabilities (CLs) that countries are exposed to, and the key characteristics of a government’s exposure to these fiscal risks. Watch the webinar.

The World Bank curates and maintains a wide range of ESG data for policy makers, financial market participants and academic researchers on its Sovereign ESG Data Portal. This webinar introduces you to the content of the ESG portal and highlights its relevance for sovereign debt investors implementing an ESG strategy and Debt Managers, followed by practitioners' perspectives. Watch the webinar.

The World Bank has developed a technical assistance package, which includes an excel-based credit risk assessment tool and a guidance note on how to use the tool to assess and quantify credit risk from public corporations. This webinar discusses the credit risk tool, the importance of contingent liabilities assessments for governments, and how the tool can be applied by DMF countries. Watch the webinar.

Awareness of nature and biodiversity risks to the global economy is on the rise among investors and policy-makers alike. While climate risks have been gradually incorporated into Debt Sustainability Analysis (DSA), and other related tools, nature related risks are still to be added to such analysis. Dr. Mortiz Kraemer, co-author of the paper Integrating Nature into Debt Sustainability Analysis argues that by omitting nature related risk, the DSAs miss significant economic and financial risk.

This webinar highlights the importance of integrating nature-related risks into debt sustainability analysis. Dr. Kraemer is joined by Dr. Klusak, who discusses how climate change risks affect sovereign ratings. Dr. Wackernagel provides input on measuring and using ecological footprints for countries. Watch the webinar.

This webinar, the second in in a two-part green, social and sustainable (GSS) bond series, explores topics around sustainable bond issuances, in particular discussing (i) the existence of a ‘greenium’ and (ii) the impact of a sovereign GSS issuance on private GSS issuances. Watch the webinar.

This webinar, a first in a two-part GSS bond series, outlines the results of a World Bank Treasury survey on sovereign theme bonds, and discusses the ways in which challenges in emerging and frontier markets can be addressed to further scale GSS bond issuances. The discussants address how the countries surveyed are advancing in the process of thematic bond issuances, and lessons learned from both the sovereign and the market perspective. Watch the webinar.

Inflation is increasingly moving into focus for policymakers. Emerging markets are especially vulnerable to it as they may be exposed to increased currency volatility and with it limited access to long term capital markets. The past two decades have seen a rising global trend in issuing sovereign inflation-linked bonds (ILBs) in both advanced and emerging economies. Despite this increase, the share of ILBs globally remains low compared to conventional bonds, and many debt management offices in emerging markets have stuck to issuing conventional bonds only. 

This webinar presents the main features of ILBs as a funding alternative based on a recently published paper. The webinar elaborates on which factors emerging economies need to consider when deciding to issue ILBs, which preconditions are needed, the benefits of ILBs, and considerations for implementing a linkers program. The webinar also discusses the experience of Brazil in using these instruments. Watch the webinar.

The World Bank launched a tool to track the transparency of domestic government securities issuances in low-income developing countries (LIDCs): the Domestic Debt Securities Heat Map. In alignment with the WBG/IMF Guidance Note for Developing Government Local Currency Bond Markets, it tracks five indicators that are most critical to ensuring transparent domestic borrowing.

This webinar introduces the indicators of the heatmap and discusses key takeaways from the first two years of assessments. We also hear from the West African Economic and Monetary Union (WAEMU or UMOA—Union Monétaire Ouest Africaine) about their experience using this tool. Watch the webinar.

A key enabler of debt transparency is the presence of a conducive public debt management legal framework. Factors that limit debt transparency include transaction-level confidentiality and public debt disclosure practices. Challenges to disclosure have become more evident during recent debt distress episodes among borrowing countries, and the COVID-19 pandemic.

This webinar presents the findings of the recently published paper, Enhancing Debt Transparency by Strengthening Public Debt Transaction Disclosure Practices. It highlights how disclosure-related issues cause information asymmetries and undermine the interests of stakeholders. The webinar also includes a discussion of concrete and actionable recommendations about disclosure, how public debt management legal frameworks support debt transparency, and insights from the Jamaican experience. Watch the webinar.

Part of the current debt burden that IDA countries face stems from resource-backed loans, a financing option resource-rich countries increasingly rely on. A recently published debt transparency report documents that among developing economies, more than 15 countries have outstanding collateralized debt, yet the terms of the loans are often opaque and the details of collateral used to secure the borrowing are often not disclosed. Moreover, based on available data, such instruments are not necessarily cheaper than unsecured loans.

This webinar discusses the implications of collateralized debt. It highlights the need for a higher level of transparency and offers some suggestions for improving the governance of collateralized borrowing. Watch the webinar.