Debt relief: Who should foot the bill?

There’s a credit crunch facing dozens of the world's poorest countries: billions of dollars are now owed and some countries simply won't manage the repayments. So who should foot the bill? We speak with Sri Lankan businessman, Indika Merenchige, who imports vehicles in to Sri Lanka – but it’s not business as usual when your government has defaulted with one of the world’s most influential creditors: China.

Meanwhile, the percentage some African countries are now paying just to service loan repayments has become alarmingly high. Jan Friederich is an African specialist at the Ratings Agency Fitch and speaks with us from Hong Kong. Plus, saying there’s no crisis on the horizon is Sonja Gibbs, the managing director and head of global policy initiatives at the Institute of International Finance, a trade group for the global financial industry. And it is when middle income countries like Turkey default on debt that really worries banks, says Harvard economist Ken Rogoff. Finally, Tim Jones represents the Jubilee Campaign, a non-profit organisation campaigning for global debt relief, thinks there might be a plan for widespread debt relief:

(Photo: A man holds banknotes of the Turkish lira. Credit: Berkcan Zengi/Getty Images)