Zambia’s government said on Wednesday it had received near-unanimous backing from bondholders for \u200ban innovative $1.36 billion debt buyback deal \u200cthat commits the government to upgrading its power network.<\/p>\n
The country is using a $600 million loan from the \u200bAfrican Development Bank, plus some of its \u200bown resources, to buy back a soon-to-be-high-interest \u20602053 sovereign bond as part of its \u200bongoing efforts to improve its finances.<\/p>\n
In return, the \u200bgovernment will spend up to $275 million over 15 years strengthening and modernising its electricity grid, in what it \u200bsays will be the world’s first “debt-for-development swap” \u200bfocused on a country’s energy sector.<\/p>\n
Last week, it offered \u200cbondholders \u2060an extra $65 million to agree to the deal. In Wednesday’s\u00a0statement, opens new tab\u00a0it said those holding a combined 97.85% of the bond’s outstanding principal amount \u200bhad now “validly \u200btendered” their \u2060notes.<\/p>\n
Zambia, which\u00a0defaulted\u00a0on its debt in the wake of the COVID-19 \u200bpandemic, said it had been working on \u200bthe \u2060new debt swap for more than two years.<\/p>\n
According to the latest statistics agency data, almost \u2060half \u200bof the country’s 22 million \u200bpopulation still lacks access to electricity.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Zambia’s government said on Wednesday it had received near-unanimous backing from bondholders for \u200ban innovative $1.36 billion debt buyback deal \u200cthat commits the government to upgrading its power network. The country is using a $600 million loan from the \u200bAfrican Development Bank, plus some of its \u200bown resources, to buy back a soon-to-be-high-interest \u20602053 sovereign […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":20865,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"iawp_total_views":3,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":{"format":"standard","override":[{"template":"1","parallax":"1","fullscreen":"1","layout":"right-sidebar","sidebar":"default-sidebar","second_sidebar":"default-sidebar","sticky_sidebar":"1","share_position":"top","share_float_style":"share-monocrhome","show_featured":"1","show_post_meta":"1","show_post_author_image":"1","show_post_date":"1","post_date_format":"default","post_date_format_custom":"Y\/m\/d","show_post_reading_time":"0","post_reading_time_wpm":"300","post_calculate_word_method":"str_word_count","show_zoom_button":"0","zoom_button_out_step":"2","zoom_button_in_step":"3","show_post_tag":"1","show_comment_section":"1","number_popup_post":"1","show_post_related":"1","show_inline_post_related":"1"}],"image_override":[{"single_post_thumbnail_size":"crop-500","single_post_gallery_size":"crop-500"}],"trending_post_position":"meta","trending_post_label":"Trending","sponsored_post_label":"Sponsored by","disable_ad":"0","source_name":"Reuters","subtitle":""},"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":{"view_counter_number":"0","share_counter_number":"0","like_counter_number":"0","dislike_counter_number":"0"},"footnotes":""},"categories":[32,2362,30],"tags":[263,394],"class_list":["post-21093","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-economy","category-featured","category-southern-africa","tag-african-development-bank","tag-zambia"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21093","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21093"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21093\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21094,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21093\/revisions\/21094"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20865"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21093"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21093"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21093"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}