The COVID pandemic has wreaked considerable damage on the economies of South America’s smaller fiscally fragile countries, with the former Dutch colony of Suriname hit especially hard. During 2020 the impoverished South American nation’s gross domestic product shrank by 13.5% , the continent’s worst performance after Venezuela. A deeply impoverished Suriname now finds itself mired in a severe economic crisis that is threatening an already fragile state that only emerged from an intense political impasse during July 2020 .The depth of Suriname’s economic problem is reflected by the former Dutch colony defaulting on scheduled debt service payments for $675 million of sovereign debt during 2020. Since then, Paramaribo has been negotiating with creditors to cure the default. That resulted in international credit agencies Fitch Ratings and S&P Global Ratings downgrading Suriname’s credit rating.President Chan Santokhi, who won the tiny South American country’s top office in the July 2020 election, […]