IMF chief urges the US and other wealthy nations to rein in debt to ease global economic pressure

BANGKOK (AP) — The head of the International Monetary Fund said Wednesday that the U.S. and other wealthy nations need to urgently tackle mounting global debt levels that are weighing heaviest on low-income countries and straining the global financial system.

IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva said that while U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and other U.S. leaders recognize that the federal deficit and national debt have grown too high, just trying to grow the U.S. economy out of its more than $40 trillion in national debt would not suffice.

“At the fund, we believe that, growth, of course, helps, but it cannot deliver fast enough the necessary adjustments,” Georgieva said at the autumn meeting of the IMF and World Bank in Bangkok.

“There is no magic,” she said, noting some other measures would be needed. “You have to go in a direction of tightening that, bringing it down, bringing deficit down.”

Rising debt levels and global inflation, partly resulting from high energy costs due to the Iran war, have pushed interest rates to multidecade highs, adding to the burdens of the world’s poorest nations.

Efforts to bring debt under control with what Georgieva and other experts call “fiscal consolidation” have suffered setbacks from heavy spending during the COVID-19 pandemic and since.

“Fiscal risks are rising, and a proper reaction is largely absent in many countries,” said Rodrigo Valdes, director of the IMF's Fiscal Affairs Department. “And in major advanced economies, the effect of fiscal indiscipline does not stop at the border. It travels to the rest of the world.”

“Among the world’s poorest countries, interest payments have reached historic highs relative to revenue, and declining amounts of aid are creating gaps that some countries have been unable to finance,” the IMF's latest Fiscal Monitor said.

That is forcing countries to make hard choices between supporting their most vulnerable people and meeting their debt repayment obligations.

“We know that today the median developing country is going to pay, is actually today paying three times more on their interest repayments than developed countries,” Alexander De Croo, former Belgian prime minister and the administrator of the United Nations Development Programme, said in an interview with The Associated Press.

On average nearly 10% of government spending is going to repay debt, and the combination of high prices for fuel, fertilizer and other needs, the impact of the El Nino weather phenomenon and higher borrowing costs has left many low income countries with little opportunity to recover.

“I mean, we don’t see really a light at the end of the tunnel,” De Croo said.

Generating jobs, especially at a time when increasing use of artificial intelligence threatens to make many traditional occupations obsolete, is another top priority. More than 1.2 billion young people are expected to enter the global workforce in the next decade or so, while forecasts suggest a net creation of only 400 million new jobs.

The UNDP announced this week a “Jobs for Prosperity” initiative that will work with governments, development banks such as the World Bank and private businesses to encourage investment in key job creating areas such as tourism, healthcare and food processing.

The initiative and other efforts will focus on helping countries attract investment by improving their governance and policies, while creating pipelines of “investible projects,” De Croo said.

“These are things that are feasible. It’s been proven that you can do it in many places of the world.”

Associated Press journalists Haruka Nuga and Tian Macleod Ji contributed to this report.

United Nations Development Programme Administrator Alexander De Croo talks to The Associated Press during an interview in Bangkok, Thailand, Wednesday, Oct. 14, 2026. (AP Photo/Sakchai Lalit)

International Monetary Fund (IMF) Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva speaks at a news conference on the Global Policy Agenda forum during the annual meetings of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank Group in Bangkok, Thailand, Wednesday, Oct. 14, 2026. (AP Photo/Sakchai Lalit)

A person rows a boa beside a logo displayed at the Queen Sirikit National Convention Center ahead of the annual meetings of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank group in Bangkok, Thailand, Friday, Oct. 9, 2026. (AP Photo/Sakchai Lalit) (edited)

A motorcycle taxi rides past a banner at the Queen Sirikit National Convention Center ahead of the annual meetings of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank Group in Bangkok, Thailand, Friday, Oct. 9, 2026. (AP Photo/Sakchai Lalit)

A man walks in front of giant billboard at the Queen Sirikit National Convention Center ahead of the annual meetings of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank Group in Bangkok, Thailand, Friday, Oct. 9, 2026. (AP Photo/Sakchai Lalit)

U.S. President Donald Trump said “massive” oil, gas and mineral exploration is set to begin in “our new and beautiful Greenland ” early Wednesday.

It wasn’t immediately clear what exploration or developments the U.S. president was referring to in his post, and Greenland is a self-governing territory of Denmark, rather than a part of the United States.

Trump posted on his Truth Social platform following a campaign event Tuesday in Wasilla, Alaska, to stump for Republican U.S. Sen. Dan Sullivan as he seeks his third term to represent the state in an election against Democratic former U.S. congresswoman Mary Peltola.

Rising energy prices — a direct result of Trump’s war in Iran — are creating serious and sustained financial hardships for America’s working class ahead of the midterm elections next month. Trump’s comments Wednesday are likely aimed at addressing voters’ concerns before they head to the polls.

But despite Trump’s optimism, resource exploration and extraction in Greenland has stymied companies for decades thanks to the island’s harsh climate, lack of key infrastructure and difficult geology. Previous efforts to extract so-called rare earth minerals, as well as oil and gas, have never progressed beyond the exploratory stage.

Trump’s comments about the Arctic island come less than a month after he signed an agreement with the leaders of Denmark and Greenland to strengthen security in the Arctic and North Atlantic following months of tensions with NATO allies over the U.S. president's repeated demands to take control of the semiautonomous Danish territory. It does not grant the U.S. any special exploration rights, but does place some limits on investments by non-NATO countries in strategic sectors.

The deal also paved the way for more U.S. bases in Greenland and eased tensions over Trump's repeated calls for Greenland to become part of the United States. The agreement would still apply if Greenland eventually chooses independence.

Trump has expressed his desire to acquire Greenland since as long ago as 2019 and, during his second term, issued threats to seize the territory from Denmark, a NATO ally.

Representatives of the leaders of Denmark and Greenland did not immediately return requests for comment Wednesday.

Greenland has large deposits of the rare earth minerals that are needed to make everything from computers and smartphones to the batteries, solar and wind technologies that will power the transition away from fossil fuels. China currently dominates the world's supply of these critical minerals and the Trump administration is seeking to break Beijing's chokehold on them.

The U.S. Geological Survey has also identified major potential offshore deposits of oil and natural gas.

But tapping these resources could be prohibitively difficult: the rare earth minerals are encased in rock, and the offshore oil and natural gas deposits are covered by Arctic ice.

Trump's Truth Social post also touted Greenland's strategic location, saying that “from a Security Purpose in the Defense and Offense of both the United States of America, and Europe,” the island is “second to none.”

“Any future attack on the United States will have to come across Greenland, where our Defense will routinely knock down drones, missiles, or any other form of weapon not yet even conceived," he wrote. "It gives us time, location, and sightline, like nowhere else in the World!”

The United States was prominent in Greenland for decades but, since 1945, the U.S. military presence in Greenland has decreased from thousands of soldiers on 17 bases and installations to roughly 200 soldiers on the remote Pituffik Space Base in the northwest. The base supports missile warning, missile defense and space surveillance operations for the U.S. and NATO.

Trump said last month that the U.S. would “immediately begin the process of developing a large military presence in the appropriate locations,” including “building two very major military bases.”

President Donald Trump speaks at a campaign rally at the Curtis D. Menard Memorial Sports Center, Tuesday, Oct. 13, 2026, in Wasilla, Alaska. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)