Jun 21, 2024
Ghana Reaches Deal to Restructure $13 Billion of Eurobonds
, Bloomberg News
(Bloomberg) -- Ghana and its eurobond investors have reached an agreement in principle to restructure about $13 billion of dollar bonds, marking a major step since the West African nation embarked a debt overhaul over a year ago.
The financial terms of the deal, including a nominal haircut and changes to maturities, will be announced next week, according to people familiar with the matter, who asked not to be identified because they are not authorized to speak publicly. It entails an increase in the haircut rate to 37% from 33%, one of the people said, adding that a few non-financial issues are yet to be sort out.
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Ghana is reorganizing almost all of its debt as part of conditions under a $3 billion International Monetary Fund bailout. The country concluded a domestic debt exchange last year and last week clinched a memorandum of understanding with bilateral lenders to revamp $5.1 billion.
The latest deal comes two months after the IMF rejected an initial pact in April for failing to support debt sustainability requirements.
A spokeswoman at the finance ministry did not respond to phone calls and a text message seeking comment.
The bond negotiations are one of the last steps in the debt restructuring exercise since the West African nation unilaterally suspended payments on its external debt in December 2022.
The April agreement, in which investors accepted a 33% hair cut, was rejected by the IMF because it failed to show that it would support a reduction in the country’s debt ratio to 55% of gross domestic product by 2028, compared with a burden of 109% before Ghana began restructuring.
The current talks were then spurred by a better-than-anticipated economic growth in 2023, which turned out to be 2.9%, compared with the 1.5% IMF estimate that was used during the first-round of talks. No deal sweeteners form part of the new deal, just as the April proposal, one of the people said.
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