G20 must heed global debt warnings to stave off another crisis | Larry Elliott

Call for developed and emerging economies to set up public registry of loan and debt data

Back in July 2005, the G8 summit at the Gleneagles hotel in Scotland announced a package of aid and debt relief for the world's poorest countries. The event marked the high point of international development cooperation and was supposed to put the finances of low-income nations on a permanent sustainable footing.

For a while, optimism seemed well founded. Public debt for those countries that qualified for help dropped from an average of 100% of their annual income in the early 2000s to just over 30% by 2013 - freeing up resources to spend on health, education and infrastructure projects.

The commodity boom was actually a bubble and, like all bubbles, it burst