Creditors’ agreement for the restructuring of Chad’s external debt is still awaited – Le Magazine du Manager

Chad’s creditors have still not reached an agreement on the restructuring of Chad’s external debt, which prevents this country, according to the Director of the IMF’s African Department, Abebe Aemro Selassie, from benefiting from the current high oil prices.

Chad has been seeking for several years “to restructure a debt of three billion dollars, including one billion owed to the Swiss oil trader Glencore”. For the Africa representative of the IMF, this process comes up once morest difficulties, even if the Chadian authorities declare themselves optimistic, and hope for the outcome of the process before mid-June.

So far, no reason has been given for the delay, while “since the end of last year, public and private creditors, in this case the oil trader Glencore, have given an agreement in principle to achieve it”.

Glencore had even sent to N’djamena at the beginning of this year, a new proposal for the reimbursement of the billion dollars loaned in 2014.

While waiting for an agreement to be reached, the International Monetary Fund regrets that “the country cannot even take advantage of the rise in oil prices on world markets because the surplus revenue falls largely into the pockets of creditors”.