Zambia poised for debt restructuring deal: Report

A deal on Zambia's debt restructuring is expected to be announced later on Thursday at a Paris summit on easing poor countries' debt burdens, four sources familiar with the matter said.

“There has been agreement by creditors on the debt restructuring," one of the sources said.

The head of the Paris Club of creditor nations Emmanuel Moulin said on Wednesday that Zambia's creditors were close to being able to propose the terms of a debt restructuring deal at the summit.

Since defaulting on its sovereign debt in 2020 in the wake of the COVID pandemic, Zambia has struggled to agree a relief deal with external creditors, with many Western officials accusing China, the country's largest bilateral creditor, of dragging its feet.

"On debt restructuring, today we will talk about Zambia which I think is a great case of celebration," IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva told a panel at the summit.

Zambia is seen as a test case for a 2020 G20 common framework for restructuring poor countries' debt, which has faced much criticism for being two slow.

"Let's face the fact that it (the common framework) is way too slow… We do have to make it work faster, work at scale," African Development Bank President Akinwumi Adesina told the same summit panel.

Only Chad has so far emerged from the common framework with a debt relief deal, while Ethiopia and Ghana are still awaiting progress on their cases in addition to Zambia.