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.