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January 10, 2011 (KHARTOUM) – The Sudanese government moved quickly to deny statements attributed to president Omer Hassan Al-Bashir in which he offered to have the north take over all the country’s debt if South Sudan decides to secede in the ongoing referendum.
- Sudan’s President Omar Hassan al-Bashir (R) meets former U.S. President Jimmy Carter, who is in Sudan as a referendum observer, in Khartoum January 8, 2011 (Reuters)
Earlier today former U.S. president Jimmy Carter told CNN that Bashir made the offer when the two men met together over the weekend.
"I spoke with President al-Bashir. He said the entire debt should be assigned to north Sudan and not to the southern part," Carter told CNN in an interview.
"So, in a way, southern Sudan is starting with a clean sheet on debt. They’ll have to make some arrangement for other sources of income, of course," he added.
But the Sudanese presidency spokesperson Emad Sayed Ahmed issued a statement carried by the state news agency saying that Bashir simply told Carter that dividing the debt burden will not be of any help to the North or the South because both sides lack the resources to make the necessary payments.
Bashir therefore told the former U.S. president that the needed solution is to forgive the debt altogether as part of the program known as the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC).
The statement underscored Bashir’s appreciation to Carter and his initiatives carried out in Sudan through the years.
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) puts Sudan’s external debts at about $35.7 billion, of which less than half is the original amount borrowed and the rest is divided between interest and late payment penalties. According to IMF, the figure is projected to reach $37.8 billion in 2010.
Research fellow Ben Leo and his assistant Ross Thuotte from the Center for Global Development wrote in the Huffington Post last month that the Arab Gulf states of Saudi Arabia and Kuwait own most of Sudan’s debt ($6 billion and $3 billion respectively).
They further revealed that Austria, Denmark, and Belgium collectively hold $4.5 billion of Sudan’s debt.
A possible drop in its share of future oil revenues if the resource-rich south secedes in July may compound Khartoum’s economic woes.
Western nations promised North Sudan debt relief should it allow the referendum to proceed peacefully.
(ST)
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