Ethiopia Will Approach Private Creditors Only as Last Resort

  • Finance Ministry official sees debt being handled case by case
  • Fitch downgraded Ethiopia this week over default-risk concerns

Ethiopia is looking to offset the economic fallout from the coronavirus pandemic.

Photographer: Anadolu Agency/Getty Images

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Ethiopia plans to only approach private creditors as part of its debt-restructuring efforts if it runs out of other options. Yields on the nation’s Eurobonds plunged by the most in eight months.

“The debt treatment will be carried out on a case-by-case basis and under a fair burden-sharing principle,” Brook Taye, a senior adviser at the Finance Ministry, said by text message. “This does not put private creditors at the center, but as kind of a last resort, or maybe even not a resort, so long as the debt treatment can accomplish the sustainability it is set out to achieve.”