The International Monetary Fund said it wants assurances from the Republic of Congo’s creditors about how the nation’s debt will be restructured before it considers a bailout, Bloomberg News reported. The debt-laden country has been trying to secure a bailout since last year from the IMF, which has asked the government to curb rampant corruption and divulge the assets of high-level officials before providing any support. Oil-producing Congo’s economy has contracted for the past two years and it owes creditors at least 5.31 trillion CFA francs ($9.2 billion).
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The Republic of Congo's state-owned insurer paid its first claims in eight years after selling real estate and is planning more property disposals to help recapitalize the business, Bloomberg News reported. Assurances et Reassurances du Congo, which owes claimants 7 billion CFA francs ($12 million), stopped payments in 2010 after the company struggled to reconstitute files damaged in a civil war a decade earlier.
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The Executive Board of the International Monetary Fund will examine debt-crippled OPEC member Congo Republic's request for a bailout on July 6, according to an IMF calendar seen by Reuters on Wednesday. Like other central African oil producers, Congo has been hit hard by low crude prices and is struggling under the weight of over $9 billion in debt, equivalent to around 110 percent of its gross domestic product, the International New York Times reported on a Reuters story.
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Swiss mining giant Glencore PLC unveiled a sweeping $5.6 billion restructuring of its troubled Congo copper company, Katanga Mining Ltd., resolving a heated dispute with Congo’s state-run mining company about a massive debt load it has built up over the past decade, The Wall Street Journal reported. Glencore said Katanga Mining will issue $5.6 billion in stock, which it will use to retire debt. The company had been saddled with $9.2 billion in high-interest debt, most of which is owed to Glencore.
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Lawyers for jailed Congo Republic opposition figure Jean-Marie Michel Mokoko called on the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to make his release a condition for the approval of a bailout for the debt-crippled nation, the International New York Times reported on a Reuters story. Like other Central African oil producing countries, Congo has been hit by low crude prices. Several neighbors, including Chad and Gabon, have already secured bailouts from the IMF.
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If it wasn’t for two sons in France sending money, pensioner George Kimbembe says he’d have joined the ranks of the dead in the Republic of Congo’s capital, Brazzaville. That foreign cash is a lifeline for the 76-year-old former civil servant who hasn’t received his pension for 13 months. It’s a shortfall emblematic of a fiscal crisis engulfing the oil-producing central African country that was battered by lower crude prices, owes creditors more than $9 billion and is seeking an International Monetary Fund bailout, Bloomberg News reported.
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Congo Republic’s government said it’s reached agreement with the International Monetary Fund on three key areas as it seeks a bailout from the multilateral lender, Bloomberg News reported. The oil-producing central African nation owes creditors at least $9.14 billion and is struggling to pay its debts because of a decline in oil prices since 2014. The government sought support from the IMF last year.
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The Republic of Congo’s plan to restructure its debt won’t affect holders of its Eurobonds, Prime Minister Clement Mouamba said. Yields on the notes fell for the first time in four days, Bloomberg News reported. The oil-producing central African nation owes creditors at least $9.14 billion and sought support from the International Monetary Fund last year. A three-year program to help stabilize the country’s “unsustainable external debt” is expected to be agreed soon, Mouamba said in a statement emailed from the capital, Brazzaville.
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Congo Republic is set to become the latest African country to start debt relief talks with trading houses after borrowing $2 billion (1.43 billion pounds) from merchants such as Trafigura and Glencore but now finding its debt levels unsustainable, sources familiar with the matter said. Trading houses regularly lend money to resource-rich clients in financial distress - be it countries such as Congo, Chad, Morocco or Iraq's Kurdistan region - when other lenders walk away.
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The Republic of Congo became the second African country this year to miss a Eurobond payment after a contractor alleging the government owes it money blocked the transfer of funds to debt investors, Bloomberg News reported. Holders of the Central African nation’s $363 million of securities due in 2029 did not receive around $21 million in coupons and amortization payments by the end of July, when the grace period expired, according to Lutz Roehmeyer, a money manager at Landesbank Berlin Investment.
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