Baker Calls for Banks to Aid Debtor Nations : Treasury Chief Seeks $75 Billion, Reports Say

Treasury Secretary James A. Baker III has proposed that American and other Western banks make available up to $25 billion in fresh loans to struggling debtor nations over the next three to five years, as part of a program that might involve as much as $75 billion in total new lending, banking sources said Wednesday.

Baker, briefing top U.S. bankers at a closed-door session Tuesday on the Reagan Administration’s new approach to the global debt crisis, said the debtor nations may need about $15 billion a year during that period to service their current debts and revive their economies, the sources said.

They said Baker’s figures were only the roughest estimates, intended to give bankers some idea of the contributions that he believes private and public sources should make.

Bankers and Treasury officials have declined comment on the meeting, which was attended by top officials of six giant U.S. banks, including Bank of America, Citibank, Chase Manhattan, Manufacturers Hanover, Morgan Guaranty and Chemical Bank.

Under Baker’s proposal, the $75 billion in fresh loans--$15 billion a year--would be provided in one-third shares by the commercial banks, the World Bank and other agencies and private sources, including the International Monetary Fund and the Interamerican Development Bank.

Bankers’ reactions to the proposal varied. Some believed the proposal for new bank loans was too high in light of the level of Third World loans already outstanding, totaling about $230 billion to Latin America alone among Western commercial banks. But other bankers apparently considered the figures modest when measured against other estimates of the nations’ capital needs.

Norman A. Bailey, a Washington consultant who helped formulate the Administration’s approach to the 1982 Mexican debt crisis, said Brazil alone may need $50 billion over the next five years. “These numbers seem really quite modest,” he said.

The bankers were more uniformly enthusiastic about Baker’s other proposals, sources said. The Treasury secretary also outlined the Administration’s proposal for a new agency created jointly by the World Bank and the IMF, according to the sources.