Tunisia Says It Has Paid 533 Mln Euros of 2023 Bond Due
TUNIS/LONDON, – Tunisia paid on Monday foreign debts to overseas bondholders worth 533 million euros ($565 million), Finance Minister Sihem Boughdiri said on Tuesday.
Tunisia’s 2023 international bond XS1901183043=TE due on Tuesday was trading at 99.4 cents on the dollar.
The minister added that Tunisia had so far succeeded in repaying 81% of its foreign debt, which amounted to 20.8 billion dinars ($6.55 billion), considering the country would continue to fulfil its obligations despite the huge pressures on public finances.
The government said earlier in October that it expected accumulated public debt in 2024 to reach 140 billion dinars, or about 79.8% of GDP, amid a scarcity of external financing for the North African country that is struggling to fix its ailing public finances.
Boughdiri is running the economy ministry after President Kais Saied fired Economy Minister Samir Saied after saying that a deal with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) would be vital for obtaining other foreign financing.
Tunisia reached a preliminary deal with the IMF over a year ago on a $1.9 billion loan programme, but it has yet to receive any money as the loan has not been approved by the fund’s executive board. The one-year lag is a record delay between a preliminary deal and the final sign-off.
($1 = 3.1777 Tunisian dinars)
($1 = 0.9434 euros)
Source : Nasdaq
