Debt relief for poor nations not an easy sell to bondholders

INTERNATIONAL – A pause in debt payments for the world’s poorest countries to help them battle the coronavirus will be a hard sell for private creditors.

The Group of 20 leading economies last week heeded calls from African finance ministers to grant a debt waiver of about $20 billion until the end of the year, and asked private creditors to step up.
Groups representing commercial creditors, who snapped up bonds from low-income countries in recent years amid record-low yields in developed markets, said they would be willing to participate. But a deferral of sovereign bond payments will be far from easy.

Source: iol.co.za