Agency says 25 states in default on sovereign loans from Kuwait

By Andrei Skvarsky.

Twenty-five nations are delaying instalment repayments of sovereign loans from Kuwait, having built up arrears totalling 118m Kuwaiti dinars ($380.24m), a Kuwaiti government agency said.

Ninety per cent of the sum are the debts of five countries – Syria, Sudan, Yemen, Cuba and North Korea, – Kuwaiti English-language daily Arab Times cited the formal lender, the Kuwait Fund for Arab Economic Development (KFAED), as saying.

The KFAED, the Gulf country’s agency in charge of financial assistance to developing countries, ruled out the possibility of forgiving any of the loans, explaining that its policy prohibits write-offs. It also warned that no renegotiation of terms was possible before the arrears were paid off.

Arab Times said that, over the past 15 years, the KFAED had made loans totalling nearly $10bn and provided more than $775m in grants. The bulk of the grant money aimed to support Syrian refugees and reconstruction projects in Palestine, the paper said.

The post Agency says 25 states in default on sovereign loans from Kuwait appeared first on EmergingMarkets.me.