Campaigner with Debt Justice UK, views are my own or someone else's
Nov 4, 2022 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
One of the most outrageous bonds out there must be the $1bn lent to Ghana in 2015 at 10.75% interest with a $400m guarantee from the World Bank.
A buyer of the bond in 2015 is already guaranteed to get $1.15bn. And they are still 'owed' $1bn, and $860m of interest payments / 🧵
2 / Interest payments on the bond have been $752.5m from 2016 to 2022. And if Ghana stops paying, the World Bank will pay $400m to bondholders: so $1.15bn in total, guaranteed.
Sep 6, 2022 • 10 tweets • 3 min read
The IMF have released their Debt Sustainability Assessment for Zambia, including information on how much debt needs to be cancelled. Summary is:
- a lot 2022-2025
- a bit 2026-2031
- but lots of payments could be shifted to 2031 on…
The Fund say the restructuring, alongside spending cuts and tax increases, need to bring debt risk to moderate by 2025.
This means external debt payments need to stay below 14% of government revenue (though the Fund allows them to be over this level in 2022, 2023, 2026 and 2031)
Aug 10, 2022 • 8 tweets • 2 min read
The IMF have released 135 pages on how they assess debt sustainability but it's all smoke and mirrors - on page 100 they admit it's all secret.
They can't be held to account, so are likely to keep on bailing out private lenders as in the 1980s, Greece 2010, Argentina 2018 etc
How the IMF decides whether or not a debt is sustainable is crucial because if it is, the IMF can lend. If not, they can only lend if a debtor restructures or defaults on the debt.
Jul 11, 2022 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
New figures released today by @debtjustice show that African governments owe Western private lenders three times more debt than they owe China.
And interest rates on private loans are double those on Chinese loans.
reuters.com/world/africa/a…
All creditors needs to take part in debt cancellation. But Western governments and private lenders focus on China to deflect from their own responsibility.
