DevTech’s Director of Public Financial Management Jose Pineda speaks with Angel Alvarado. Angel is now a Senior Fellow in the Department of Economics at the University of Pennsylvania. Previously, he served as a deputy to the National Assembly of Venezuela for the district of Petare. While in parliament, he was a member of the Permanent Committee on Finance and Economic Development, taking on the role of the economic spokesperson for the committee.  

Jose and Angel’s conversation focuses on the 2024 Venezuela election and several recent events that have left many wondering whether a fair and open democratic election may actually be on the table. This is significant given the many years of authoritarian rule that have afflicted the country, beginning under the Presidency of Hugo Chavez, and now under current President Nicolas Maduro.  

In this episode, DevTech CEO Rafael Romeu speaks with Carmen Reinhart, who currently occupies the role of Minos A. Zombanakis Professor of the International Financial System at Harvard’s Kennedy School and previously served as Senior Vice President and Chief Economist at The World Bank Group. The pair discuss the current state of public debt in low- and middle-income countries and focus in on the role China and other new debt holders have played in shaping today’s debt landscape.

According to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), 60 percent of low-income developing countries are at high risk of or already in a debt crisis. This should be extremely concerning to the development community as many of the advances enabled by foreign assistance risk being wiped out by the debt emergencies threatening the developing world. As development practitioners, how do we navigate these muddy waters, especially considering that much of the debt in the developing world is held by the PRC and commercial lenders? This question is at the heart of the conversation featured in this podcast that includes DevTech CEO Rafael Romeu as moderator and Senior Vice President at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) Daniel Runde and USAID Deputy Assistant Administrator and Senior Advisor on the People's Republic of China Anka Lee as panelists.