Group of 20 finance and central bank chiefs meet in India next week on the first anniversary of Russia's invasion of Ukraine to discuss rising debt troubles among developing countries, the regulation of cryptocurrencies and the global economic slowdown.

The Feb. 22-25 meeting in the Nandi Hills summer retreat near Bengaluru, Karnataka state, is the first major event of India's G20 presidency and will be followed by a March 1-2 meeting of foreign ministers in New Delhi.

As global borrowing costs rise, India, whose neighbors Sri Lanka, Pakistan and Bangladesh have all sought International Monetary Fund support in recent months, wants to put debt relief at the forefront of discussions at the finance talks.

It is drafting a proposal for G20 countries to help debtor nations badly hit by the economic impacts of the pandemic and the Ukraine war by asking big lenders, including China, to take a large haircut on loans, Reuters reported on Wednesday.

New Delhi also supports a push by the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and the United States for the so-called Common Framework (CF), a G20 initiative launched in 2020 to help poor countries delay debt repayments, to be expanded to include middle-income countries, though China has resisted.

"We support exploring a possible extension of the CF to middle-income countries facing debt vulnerabilities," said a European Union paper, signaling its backing for such moves ahead of the meeting.

The World Bank said in December the world's poorest countries owed US$62 billion in annual debt service to bilateral creditors, a year-on-year increase of 35 percent, triggering a higher risk of defaults. Two thirds of the debt burden is owed to China, the world's largest sovereign creditor.

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