• Constituting a committee to meet Lenders does not give guarantee that they will accept the proposal.
• There is no guarantee that the debt will be restructured after the meeting.
• Government’s immediate objective at the moment is to marshal the resources.
An opposition Political party has advised government to come up with plans and strategies of finding resources which must be used to deal with the country’s current debt situation.
Speaking when he featured on Money’ “My Economy Program,” Green Party President Peter Sinkamba said constituting a committee to meet the Lenders, does not give guarantee that they will accept the country’s proposal.
Mr. Sinkamba states that government’s immediate objective should be to marshal the resources to be able to deal with the debt situation in terms of paying the interest coupons and the debt that is due.
“Even if you constitute a committee to meet the Lenders, there is no guarantee that they will accept your proposal. So we should not even put in a lot of hope that after the meeting, then we expect the debt to be either written off or to be restructured.”
“Our immediate objective at the moment is to marshal the resources to be able to deal with the debt situation in terms of paying the interest coupons as well as the debt that is due. Come up with plans and strategies to find money which must be used to deal with the debt situation,” Mr. Sinkamba advised.
He noted that expecting lenders to restructure or write off the debt is not the right way to go.
“Expecting people to forgive you is too much because there is no guarantee that they are going to forgive you, therefore you cannot plan based on that kind of scenario where you expect to be forgiven,” he stated.
Last week, Finance Minister Dr. Situmbeko Musokotwane disclosed that in the aftermath of the completion of the Debt Sustainability Analysis, the next important milestone is the formation of the Official Creditor Committee which is expected to be formed within the next few weeks paving the way for the commencement of the restructuring discussions.
Dr. Musokotwane said discussions with the Official Creditor Committee on Zambia’s debt are expected to culminate in them providing financing assurances to the IMF Executive Board to enable the approval of a US$1.4 billion Extended Credit Facility (ECF) for the country.
