N’DJAMENA (Reuters) – Chad has reached agreement on a debt plan with creditors, including Swiss commodities trader Glencore, finance minister Tahir Hamid Nguilin said in a statement on Friday.
The deal is the first to be agreed under a framework created by the Group of 20 major economies and the Paris Club in late 2020 to help poor countries to weather the COVID pandemic and widely criticised for delays in granting applicants debt relief.
It is also China’s first participation in a finalised joint debt treatment deal with other creditors, a source close to the negotiations told Reuters.
A third of the central African country’s external debt of nearly $3 billion is commercial and concentrated in an oil-backed loan from Glencore.
“The parameters of this debt treatment are in line with the commitments made by Chad under its ECF (Extended Credit Facility) programme with the IMF as well as with the principles of the Common Framework and make it possible to restore the sustainability of the public debt,” the minister’s statement said.
It said the agreement with both bilateral and commercial creditors will allow for the disbursement of a new tranche of financing from Chad’s $572 million, four-year Extended Credit Facility programme with the International Monetary Fund by the end of December 2022, pending IMF approval.
Chad’s bilateral creditors – China, France, India and Saudi Arabia – said in October that the country did not require debt relief at the moment given higher oil prices, but pledged to reconvene and offer Chad help if needed.
The IMF said earlier this month that it was not able to make more disbursements to Chad from the ECF program that began in 2021 until a “contingent” debt relief deal was agreed by creditors.
Chad’s statement did not specify the terms of the debt relief agreement.
Spokespeople for Glencore and the IMF were not immediately available for comment.
(Reporting by Mahamat Ramadane; Writing by Nellie Peyton and Rachel Savage; Editing by David Goodman and Jane Merriman)
