The Political Economy of Bilateral Lending from Emerging Creditors

A paucity of data has thus far made systematic comparative analysis of emerging bilateral creditors a major challenge. In this study I take advantage of new World Bank data on the sovereign creditors of low- and middle-income countries to map the distribution of lending from the key emerging bilateral official creditors during the 21st century, focusing on the BRICs (Brazil, Russia, India, and China). I then statistically analyze the political and economic factors that drive BRICs’ lending and investigate whether their motivations and terms are different from each other and from “traditional” creditors. The results suggest that concerns about the BRICs using bilateral credit as a foreign policy tool may be overblown. Instead, BRICs official loan commitments are driven by their trading ties with borrowers, and are complements to rather than substitutes for traditional lenders. However, the results also show that countries which borrow proportionately more from the BRICs face significantly less concessional terms on their official external debts compared to borrowing from traditional OECD lenders. Given the growing importance of emerging bilateral creditors, systematic comparative understanding of their motives and behavior has substantial policy relevance, in particular amid COVID-19 induced economic distress across much of the developing world.