to insist it stores the data. Their endorsement will have weight with the private sector, says Sonja Gibbs of the. Although lenders benefit from knowing more about government debts, some are reluctant to share information they consider commercially sensitive. They will need to be pressed to take part. “It will be a name and shame game,” says Mark Plant of the Centre for Global Development, a think-tank. “That sometimes works, it sometimes doesn’t.
How to give the scheme bite? One proposal is that sovereign-loan contracts that are not publicly disclosed within 30 days of signature should be unenforceable in court. Most international loans are made under New York or English law—as Mozambique’s dodgy deals were—so tweaking the rules in those two jurisdictions would be a good start.
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