ZAMBIA BEING USED AS GUINEA PIGS IN DEBT RESTRUCTURING – HH
By Darius Choonya
Republican President Hakainde Hichilema says Zambia is being used as a guinea pig in the G20 Common Framework in relation to the debt restructuring process.
He says developed countries await to see the country conclude the process as failure, to do so would mean disaster for other countries in need of help.
In his annual greetings address to the diplomatic corp on Friday January 26, 2024, Mr. Hichilema also says if the process does not finalise, it will negate the gains that the country has made in its economic recovery program.
He has also disclosed that two countries are yet to sign the deal hence asking diplomats accredited to Zambia for their governments to speed up their work to ensure the country’s debt restructuring efforts succeed.
Zambia, which is seeking to restructure $6.3 billion in bilateral debt, signed up to use the Common Framework to restructure its debts three years ago, after becoming the continent’s first pandemic-era sovereign defaulter in November 2020.
But the progress has been painfully slow, and hit a deadlock in November when official lenders rejected a deal with bondholders, saying the commercial creditors needed to take a bigger loss.-Diamond TV
If lenders had trust in Hakainde, this restructuring deal would have been signed by 14:00hrs after he got elected.
The trouble is that they know he is a conman.
More importantly Mr “Indigo”, HH is a better driver of this nation than ECL. I see your thoughts through what you posted. You will soon see the MoUs signed and a brighter outlook for the nation. The creditors are umsettled because will be out of the current quagmire and start progressing from debt to reserve. Creditors want someone to always pay them, else they’ll be broke! Simple logic!!
We all want a better Zambia, that is why we voted for Hakainde. No one wants him to fail, because it is us citizens that suffer when leaders fail. Right now, he is failing in running the economy, and we are suffering as a nation.
Apart from his dodgy graphs, there is nothing right now to suggest things will get any better. We should let him know we are not happy with his under 5 performance right now.