While debt has been a problem for millennia, contemporary international institutions have focused on alternative dispute resolutions for commercial disputes for only decades, according to an analysis in mediate.com. according to an analysis in mediate.com. In the late ’90s many developing countries experienced financial distress. In 1999, the World Bank began to analyze the problem and in 2001developed the “Insolvency and Creditor Rights Standards” (ICR Standards). The focus was on judicial proceedings. The possibility of resorting to mediation was regarded as entirely residual.
Tunisia
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The International Monetary Fund will hold a virtual visit with Tunisian officials on Feb. 14 to discuss the government's economic reform program, a central bank official told Reuters on Wednesday. The North African country, which is suffering from a financial crisis, is seeking to obtain a rescue package from the fund in exchange for unpopular reforms, including spending cuts. The government says the country requires the rescue package to avert a collapse in public finances. Some public sector salaries for December were paid late in January.
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Tunisia hopes to reach a crucial deal with the International Monetary Fund in April, the finance minister said Wednesday, rejecting speculation that the nation faces imminent bankruptcy, Bloomberg News reported. “The situation is difficult,” Sihem Boughdiri Nemsia said in an interview with broadcaster Shems FM. “Authorities are trying to stabilize the economy,” she said. Concerns over insolvency are however “alarmist,” and authorities can afford to pay public-sector wages for the coming months.
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Tunisia will continue to fulfil its foreign debt obligations and has started preparatory work for an IMF deal, Prime Minister Najla Bouden said on Friday, as talk of a possible default swirls among local and foreign analysts, Reuters reported. Her comments echo those of Finance Minister Sihem Boughdiri who said at an economic conference on Thursday that Tunisia was far from rescheduling its debts within the Paris Club, despite its financial difficulties.
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Tunisia is participating in the International Monetary Fund’s annual meetings, but there are no imminent visits planned by the lender to the North African country, a central bank official said, a day after a state-owned TV channel reported a delegation was due, Bloomberg News reported. Reporting Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva’s Wednesday comments on Tunisia’s troubled economy, Wataniya 1 said they came “on the eve of the visit of a delegation from the International Monetary Fund to Tunisia on a week-long mission to discuss the possibilities of resuming negotiations” on assistance.
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Tunisia’s state-owned firms are in dire straits, facing a perfect storm of debt, mismanagement, the coronavirus pandemic and a decade of political instability that could push some to bankruptcy, Agence France Presser's reported. Ten years since a revolution that overthrew the nepotistic regime of Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, the sweeping reforms economists say are needed to clean up state finances have yet to materialise. The situation has pushed many of the cash-strapped North African country’s 110 state-owned firms towards the edge.
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Tunisian youths clashed with security forces in cities across this North African nation for a fourth night on Monday, burning tires and hurling gasoline bombs to protest worsening economic problems, police violence and poor government services, the Washington Post reported. Security forces have retaliated with tear gas and water cannons to disperse the hundreds of teenagers. While scenes of mayhem and chaos captured in videos zipped across social media, there were also peaceful demonstrations.
As the coronavirus crisis deepens in emerging economies around the world, collapsing currencies, commodity prices, export earnings and tourism revenues threaten to shred the finances of many governments, leaving them scrambling to avoid default, the Financial Times reported. Zambia has already called in advisers to restructure its debt while Ecuador has asked for more time to make coupon payments on three dollar bonds. Few analysts believe they will be the last.
The International Monetary Fund has successfully concluded negotiations for a $2.8bn bailout for Tunisia, the latest in a series of loans to countries in north Africa and the Middle East to help them cope with the stresses posed by a growing influx of refugees and a collapse in oil prices. Tunisia, which was home to the uprising that set off the 2011 Arab Spring, has been struggling to cope with the political and economic transition since the overthrow of Zein al-Abidine Ben Ali, the country’s former dictator.
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