Zambia seeks $8.4bn cash debt relief for 2022-25 – IMF Says
Zambia is seeking $8.4 billion of “cash debt relief” from 2022 to 2025, the International Monetary Fund said on Tuesday in a long-awaited report on the first African nation to default on its debt in the pandemic era, in 2020.
Zambia needs to bring down its debt service-to-revenue ratio to 14%, make its electricity tariffs cost-reflective and also address the amount of bad loans in the banking system, the IMF said.
The Fund said in a report that will form the basis of negotiations to restructure Zambia’s debts that there were “sufficient assurances’ in the government’s plan to bring its debt back to a sustainable level again. (Reporting by Rachel Savage, Marc Jones and David Lawder; Editing by Estelle Shirbon)
