CONGO Debt Treatment - March 18, 2010

Creditors members of the Paris Club also expressed their intention to grant additional debt relief to 100% on a bilateral basis for an amount of USD 1.4 billion.

As a result, the total debt relief will amount to USD 2.4 billion.

possibility to conduct debt swaps

On a voluntary and bilateral basis, the Government of each Participating Creditor Country or its appropriate institutions may sell or exchange, in the framework of debt for nature, debt for aid, debt for equity swaps or other local currency debt swaps:

(i) the amounts of outstanding loans and consolidations as regards ODA debts;

(ii) the amounts of other outstanding credits, loans and consolidations, up to 20% of the amounts of outstanding loans, credits and consolidations as of 31 August 1990 or up to an amount of 20 million SDR, whichever is higher.

The Republic of Congo was declared eligible to the enhanced HIPC Initiative by the IDA and the IMF in 2004 and was declared to have reached its Completion Point in January 2010. In this context, the Republic of Congo commits to seek promptly from all its external creditors which are not participating in the Agreed Minutes dated 18 March 2010, their appropriate contribution in terms of debt relief to the enhanced HIPC Initiative, on top of traditional debt relief mechanisms and consistent with the proportional burden sharing based on their relative exposure in net present value of total external debt at Decision Point after the full use of traditional debt relief mechanisms.

The appropriate nature of the debt relief provided will be assessed not only on the basis of the reduction in the net present value of the debt as computed under Appropriate Market Rate, but also on the terms of repayment of the debts not cancelled. For this purpose, all relevant elements will be taken into account, including the level of cash payments received by those creditors as compared to their share in the Republic of Congo ’s external debt, the nature and characteristics of all treatment applied, including debt buy backs, and all characteristics of the reorganized claims and in particular their repayment terms whatever forms they take and in general the financial relations between the Republic of Congo  and all their other creditors.

Consequently, the Republic of Congo commits not to accord any category of external creditors -and in particular litigating creditors, creditor countries not participating in the Agreed Minutes dated 18 March 2010, commercial banks, suppliers and bondholders- a treatment more favourable than that accorded to the Participating Creditor Countries.

Participating creditors

Observers

Press release