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US treasury urged China to ease Zambia's debt.

 Janet Yel­len called on China to agree to a rapid restruc­tur­ing of loans to Zam­bia yes­ter­day, say­ing

China

Beijing was a «bar­rier» to end­ing the debt crisis in the south­ern African nation. She had «spe­cific­ally raised the issue of Zam­bia and asked for co-oper­a­tion in try­ing to reach a speedy res­ol­u­tion» when she met Liu He, Xi Jin­ping’s eco­nomic tsar, last week. Without a restruc­tur­ing, Zam­bia, in par­tic­u­lar, can­not access a $1.3bn IMF bail­out needed to reboot its eco­nomy. Moreover, Zam­bia’s eco­nomy remains weakened by the leg­acy of the 2020 default, provid­ing a warn­ing for coun­tries such as Sri Lanka and Ghana that can no longer afford to pay back debts and owe a sig­ni­fic­ant chunk of their bor­row­ings to China.

Zam­bia’s pres­id­ent said yes­ter­day he was hop­ing for a debt deal by the end of the first quarter of this year. However, ana­lysts have said that Zam­bia’s restruc­tur­ing has been held back by a lack of exper­i­ence and co-ordin­a­tion among the Chinese state and devel­op­ment banks that lent to projects such as hydro­power dams, high­ways and air­ports that then soured. A restruc­tur­ing that will enable Zam­bia to emerge from default was a «top pri­or­ity» for the US, Yel­len said. She added that «we will con­tinue to press for all offi­cial bilat­eral and private sec­tor cred­it­ors to mean­ing­fully par­ti­cip­ate in debt relief for Zam­bia, espe­cially China».

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  1. Anonymous24 January 2023 at 10:04

    China wants to keep Zambia captive so I don't see this resolving itself any time soon.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Claire24 January 2023 at 10:20

      The US also has interests in Zambia, they aren't doing this from the good of their heart, that's for sure.

      Delete
    2. Tom24 January 2023 at 10:36

      @Claire, yes, I agree, but no one was expecting otherwise. The US is a state and it needs to take care of its people first and foremost and of course they have certain interests in Zambia. As long as those interests are ok and don't infringe on Zambia's freedom in some way, this is ok I think.

      Delete

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