New Delhi, Sep 29 (TIWN) Forty-two countries now have levels of public debt exposure to China in excess of 10 per cent of GDP.

These debts are systematically underreported to the World Bank's Debtor Reporting System (DRS) because, in many cases, central government institutions in low-income and middle-income countries are simply not the primary borrowers responsible for repayment, says a research by AidData.  According to Brad Parks, AidData's Executive Director and a co-author of the report, "these unreported debts are worth approximately $385 billion and the hidden debt problem is getting worse over time".  He and his co-authors find that average annual underreporting of repayment liabilities to China was $13 billion during the pre-BRI era, but $40 billion during the BRI era. The average government, they estimate, is underreporting its actual and potential repayment obligations to China by an amount that is equivalent to 5.8 per cent of its GDP.