OREANDA-NEWS Last year, Chinese financial institutions, banks, government organizations and companies increased the amount of loans to African countries for the first time since 2016. Kommersant writes about this with reference to the report of the Center for Global Development Policy at Boston University.

In 2023, the total figure increased sharply, amounting to $4.61 billion, which is three times more than the amount provided to Africa by representatives of China in 2022.

The article notes that over 23 years, China has spent $ 182.3 billion on loans to the countries of the continent, but in recent years the pace of lending has become lower, and the Chinese themselves have changed tactics, preferring not to invest in the private sector, but to lend to governments of states that are more likely to be able to pay off their debts in the future.

Earlier it became known that the policy of mass lending to developing countries, which has been carried out by the Chinese authorities in recent decades, has led to the fact that many borrowers have stopped paying their debts. According to the World Bank, it was often about hidden defaults, since the conditions under which official Beijing and state-owned banks distributed loans were extremely opaque, and the contracts were drawn up in such a way that they could only be settled through bilateral negotiations and without making data public. In 2022, it was noted that Beijing has already changed its behavior, but problems with previously issued debts persist.