By NATION REPORTER
PRESIDENT Hakainde Hichilema is on Sunday expected in China to discuss as priority number one, the huge staggering debt owed to that country and formalizing the restructuring strategy, among other issues.
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This will be the first trip by Mr. Hichilema to the country, which is presently touted as Zambia’s biggest creditor, since he assumed the highest office in the land in July 2021.
China’s Foreign Ministry office has confirmed Mr. Hichilema’s visit.
Zambia owes China not less than two-thirds of the country’s $6.3 billion debt, which government has trotted around the globe for to have restructured, through accumulated loans from the Export-Import Bank of China. Hence, the magnitude attached to President Hichilema’s visit to the East Asian economic giant whose support to debt restructuring plans cannot be underplayed.
Zambia seeks to streamline its debt and stagger its repayments to between 14 to 20 years to give the country some relief to make structural and social investments.
Painstaking as it may have been, the Hichilema administration has been able to attain some success in negotiating the debt restructuring agreement, with the June summit in Paris, France, being the scoring ground.
Zambia managed to strike agreements with its creditors, but will have to formalize agreements with all of them, among whom include China, the United Kingdom, France, South Africa, India and Israel, and managed to unlock the International Monetrary Fund (IMF) rescue package totaling $1.3 billion, to be disbursed in tranches.
The Zambian government is now seeking to formalize agreements with all its creditors, which sojourn President Hichilema is undertaking, taking him to China from 10th to 16th September 2023, as confirmed by China’s Foreign Ministry.
President Hichilema is also expected to meet with the Chinese Premier, Chairman of the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress, and the respective Leaderships of Shenzhen City, Jiangxi Province and Fujian Province before he returns home.
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