Sudan Targets Clearing Most of Its $60 Billion Debt by End-July

(Bloomberg) -- Sudan aims to clear a “substantial portion” of its $60 billion foreign debt by the end of July, Finance Minister Gibril Ibrahim said, a key step in the beleaguered African nation’s economic revival.

The government is likely to officially clear its arrears with the International Monetary Fund by July 1, fulfilling a main condition for debt relief ahead of a meeting of the Paris Club, an informal group of 22 government creditors, two weeks later, Ibrahim told Bloomberg in an interview.

He put the amount likely to be cleared at 70%-90%, saying 7%-10% of the remaining debt was commercial and may “not be immediate.”

Sudan, where long-time dictator Omar al-Bashir was ousted amid a 2019 popular uprising, is racing to turn around an economy wrecked by decades of mismanagement, sanctions and isolation from global markets. Much of the country’s debt was accumulated in the 1970s under then-President Jaafar Nimeiri.

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