RP seeks debt rescheduling

RP seeks debt rescheduling

MANILA (AFP): The Philippines said yesterday it has sought a rescheduling of US$299 million in official debts owed to the Paris Club of lender nations which fall due this year and next to cover a financing shortfall.

Officials said Manila has decided to exclude previously scheduled debt totaling $759 million from the new negotiations, expected to begin in two weeks' time.

The Finance Department said Finance Secretary Roberto de Ocampo and Central Bank Governor Gabriel Singson wrote to Christian Noyer, the French chairman of the Paris Club, after Manila secured International Monetary Fund (IMF) approval for its economic program last month.

"We would like to request the favorable consideration of our bilateral creditors under the Paris Club for another round of rescheduling of our official debts under the most concessional terms possible," they said in the letter, released to the press yesterday.

The letter said that despite a "comfortable level of reserves at over three months of imports of goods and services," Manila needed to reschedule official bilateral debt maturing between July 1994 and end-1995 to take care of its "residual financing need of $488 million" for the same period.