The head of the International Monetary Fund said on Wednesday that the US and other wealthy nations needed to urgently tackle mounting global debt levels that were weighing heaviest on low-income countries and straining the global financial system.

IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva said that while US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and other US leaders recognised that the federal deficit and national debt had grown too high, just trying to grow the US economy out of its more than US$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.