About: The Debt Service Suspension Initiative (DSSI) means that bilateral official creditors are, during a limited period, suspending debt service payments from the poorest countries (73 low- and lower middle-income countries) that request the suspension. It is a way to temporarily ease the financing constraints for these countries and free up scarce money that they can instead use to mitigate the human and economic impact of the COVID-19 crisis.
Detail: The DSSI helps address immediate liquidity needs but does not mean that existing debt sustainability problems in some of these countries will be resolved. Before the onset of the COVID-19 crisis, debt vulnerabilities had become elevated in many IDA countries, with more than 50 percent being classified as either in or at high risk of debt distress. But DSSI does help by providing more time to properly assess and address debt sustainability on a country-by-country basis.
