Why is he saying it’s $3.5billion instead of $3billion?
By Emmanuel Mwamba
Zambia’s Eurobond was $750,000.00, US$1,000,000.00 and US$1,250,000.00 totalling $3billion.
On October 26th 2023, Zambia and the External Bondholder Steering Committee made similar announcement as today, proclaiming success and completion of the debt restructure.
The External Bondholder Steering Committee is one for Eurobond while the Official Creditors Committee(OCC) is dealing with China and the Paris Club.
Earlier in October 2023, Zambia’s OCC announced that a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) had been agreed with its Official Creditors’ Committee on the comprehensive debt treatment agreed in June 2023 which signaled the beginning of the completion of the debt restructure programme.
It was not to be.
The Official Creditors’ Committee and the IMF rejected the Agreement made with the External Bondholder Steering Committee.
Their concerns were the breach of the G20 comparability of treatment
provisions.
Their concerns were;
- Zambian accepted to pay $800million outstanding debt service accumulated since December 2020.
The G20 rules such arreas must be written off.
- Zambia accepted to raise the coupon value of the bonds from $3billion to $3,135billion. This was against G20 rules.
- Zambia committed to make a bullet payment of $2.5billion in 2024-2025 fiscal year. This was clearly unaffordable for the country that is pursuing a $1.3billion bail-out with the IMF.
- Zambia agreed to a debt discount of 18% instead of the 40% given by China and others.
This violated the G20 rules on the comparability of debt treatment
provisions.
What is important is for Government to publish the details of Agreement in Principle (AIP) hoping that this succeeds.
Sister Mwamba you started looting and raping the nation with your time in the MMD through PF and you contributed to mess we find ourselves in.
Shameless numbskull