Zambia asks Guterres for help to boost its debt restructuring process

March 5 (EUROPA PRESS) –

The President of Zambia, Hakainde Hichilema, has asked the Secretary General of the United Nations, Antonio Guterres, for help in promoting the conclusion of talks on the restructuring of the African country’s debt, in line with the proposals made in recent weeks by the Head of the international institution.

Hichilema, after holding a closed-door meeting with Guterres on Saturday in Doha, the capital of Qatar, has lamented the slowness of the talks in this regard with international creditors. “Nothing has moved fast enough,” she later explained to Zambian television channel ZNBC.

Zambia, recalls the Bloomberg agency, is in talks to outline a postponement of 12.8 billion dollars in external loans under the common framework of the G-20, after the southern African nation officially entered a state of ‘default’ in November 2020.

“Yes, we have discussed with the UN Secretary General a plan for him to help us and bring the talks to a successful conclusion to promote the conclusion of the debt restructuring,” the Zambian leader has made known in comments broadcast by the chain.

These conversations take place less than a month after the UN Secretary General denounced, during his opening speech at the African Union summit in Addis Ababa (Ethiopia), the “extortion” of which the continent is being victimized. at the hands of a global financial system, in need of a “radical transformation”, which prevents African countries from developing their “vital systems”.

Such a thing never happens because “the world financial system denies them debt relief, or any financing on favorable terms, as a rule, while charging exorbitant interest”, declared the secretary general during the opening of the summit.

As a result, “African countries cannot invest in critical areas” such as health, education, green technology, social protection or the creation of new sustainable jobs, and at the same time climb “the development ladder with one hand tied behind the back.”

It should be remembered that, last year and according to the International Monetary Fund, public debt indices in sub-Saharan Africa reached their highest point in more than two decades.