There’s no US$300, 000m East loan, says Dr Ng’andu

By SILUMESI MALUMO
GOVERNMENT has refuted media reports that it is about to acquire a US$300, 000 million loan from a lender in East Africa.
Minister of Finance Bwalya Ng’andu said yesterday the reports were not factual because Government had no intentions of acquiring a loan of that amount.
Dr Ng’andu said it was unfortunate that some individual had taken a route of peddling lies to mislead the nation.
The minister said the reports which were being circulated were not true and must be treated as such by the public.
“I have difficulties to respond to rumours especially that their origin is social media. As you are aware social media is a difficult source of information.
Meanwhile, Dr Ng’andu said the sinking fund would be used in paying off the debt.
“We have taken three, four, five prong in addressing this issue of dealing with debt management and the sinking fund remain one biggest item of that process.
The whole debt restructuring process has a lot of components to it and one is the debt servicing stand still which I have spoken about and which we are beginning to implement.
The next stage is that of the achievement of more sustained debt restructuring that will involve a number of different things for example which will involve us looking at which loan with the view to determine to extend the tenure of that particular loan or whether there is the issue of refinancing,” Dr Ng’andu said.
He said there are a number of measures which would be implemented in the next one year to manage the debt.