G20 creditors on board for Ghana’s debt relief talks -Paris Club

G20 creditors on board to discuss debt relief Ghana -Paris Club

All member states of the G20 group of economic powers in the Board to restructure the debt of Ghana and Paris Club members are ready to take the first step to form a committee of creditors, an official of the Paris Club told Reuters on Friday.

Last week, Ghana asked another government to restructure its debt, becoming the fourth country after Chad, Ethiopia and Zambia to do so under the G20 General Framework.

The program, to be launched in 2020, is supposed to speed up the coordination process between creditor governments to restructure the debts of low-income countries after the pandemic.

However, progress has proven glacial for the first case, the situation of Western countries has said in part due to the lack of restructuring experience from China, a non-Paris Club G20 creditor who has become the main creditor in recent years.

“There is a commitment by the leader to form a committee of creditors, so it is a question of time. We know that all G20 members are committed to debt treatment under the Common Framework,” Paris Club officials told reporters.

The official asked not to be named in order to speak freely about the restructuring situation.

Setting up a creditors’ committee took months for previous cases, but the official said Paris Club members are ready to do so for Ghana and hope to do so within a month.

The official said Ghana’s case was less complicated than that of Zambia, whose case the official said was moving forward after struggling since becoming the first African country to fail after the pandemic.

“We think the process will be smoother and smoother based on previous cases,” the official said, adding that the Ghanaian authorities had asked for assurances that the cases would be dealt with in a “timely manner”.

source: Reuters

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