The World Bank urges the Creditor Committee to reach a quick agreement on the specifics of deep debt relief for Zambia that is consistent with the upper-credit-tranche program of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the joint World Bank-IMF Debt Sustainability Assessment. The World Bank expects commercial creditors to promptly agree on a comparable debt treatment for Zambia that would achieve debt sustainability over the medium term.  A common discount rate should be utilized in measuring the debt relief provided by bilateral and commercial creditors to ensure comparability of treatment. 

In 2021, Zambia's per capita income declined to $1,040 and the country was re-classified as low-income for the first time since 2011. This follows several years of decline in Zambia's GNI per capita, starting with $1,440 in 2018.  With the economy further weakened by the COVID-19 pandemic, 60 percent of the Zambian population lived on less than $1.90 a day in 2021. Without a timely debt resolution, this trend will continue to wipe out the development gains that Zambia achieved in the past two decades.