China and India have signed agreements to restructure their holdings of Zambian debt, the bankrupt southern African nation’s president has said, raising hopes that a delayed effort to exit a long-running default is back on track, reports the Financial Times. Hakainde Hichilema said Zambia planned to resume talks with private creditors to resolve a “terrible debt mountain” of more than $13 billion in external debt that Africa’s second largest copper producer stopped paying in 2020.
Zambia agreed outline terms to modify $6.3 billion in debt owed to official lenders last year. But progress was stopped when China, the single biggest creditor, objected to a deal with private investors involving about $4 billion in US dollar bond claims—making Beijing’s signing of a deal now more significant.
“The last two countries that had not signed [deals as] official creditors, China and India, have signed, and I’m very pleased to indicate that,” Hichilema told traditional leaders at Zambia’s annual N’cwala harvest ceremony in the country’s east.