ZAMBIA AGREES MEMORANDUM OF UNDERSTANDING WITH OFFICIAL CREDITOR COMMITTEE PAVING WAY
FOR DEBT TREATMENT COMPLETION
Marrakech, Morocco, Saturday, 14th October, 2023 –
The Ministry of Finance and National Planning of the Republic of Zambia is pleased to announce that a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) has been agreed with its Official Creditor Committee (OCC) on the comprehensive debt treatment agreed in June 2023. Zambia’s OCCis co-chaired by China and France, and Vice-Chaired by South Africa.
The MoU formalises the agreement reached in June with official creditors and represents an important milestone in Zambia achieving long-term debt sustainability.
Each official creditor will now begin their internal process to sign the MoU.
Following the signing of the MoU, the terms will be implemented through bilateral agreements with each member of the OCC.
The Ministry of Finance and National Planning is hopeful that the formalisation of the OCC agreement will further support the progress Zambia is making in achieving a comparable agreement with its private creditors to resolve the debt
overhang.
Zambia is continuing its good faith engagement with all its commercial external creditors and hopes to conclude
restructuring agreements that would both respect Zambia’s need for debt relief and the comparability of treatment principle.
Zambia also reiterates its firm commitment to remain in arrears with its external commercial creditors until agreements compatible with thecomparability of treatment principle are reached.
Related to the development, the Minister of Finance and National Planning, Dr. Situmbeko Musokotwane, says:
“We are grateful to all our official creditors, especially the co-chairs of the committee, China and France, and vice-chair South Africa, for their commitment to help resolve Zambia’s debt overhang. We are also thankful to our multilateral partners, the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and the African Development Bank,for their continuous support and substantial financial contribution to our development agenda.”
The next step is to secure a comparable agreement with our private creditors.”
“Our government committed to resolve the mounting debt suffocating our economy and we are proud of the immense progress we have made. Once completed, debt restructuring will free up resources vital for this government to invest in our development agenda: first generation reforms, investment in human capital and job generation to reinvigorate our economy and create opportunities for the Zambian people.”
