Sudan: Paris promises to reduce debt

Emmanuel Macron greeted, Monday in Paris, the “post-Islamist” revolution in Sudan on the occasion of an international conference intended to reduce the debt of this country, in the presence of fifteen leaders of African and European states and the Gulf as well as international organizations. For this summit organized at the large ephemeral palace built on the Champ-de-Mars, Emmanuel Macron welcomed Sudanese President Abdel Fattah al-Burhan on Monday afternoon, as well as his counterparts from Egypt, Ethiopia and Rwanda. Other guests present, leaders of the IMF, the World Bank and the African Union, heads of European diplomacy (Italy, Germany) and the Gulf (Saudi Arabia, Kuwait), not to mention representatives of the UN and of the EU.

French promise

Ahead of this summit, the French Minister of the Economy, Bruno Le Maire, announced that Paris would lend $ 1.5 billion to Sudan, in the form of a bridging loan, to allow it to cover its arrears. vis-à-vis the International Monetary Fund. The French President had made the promise to Sudanese Prime Minister Abdallah Hamdok during his visit to France in September 2019, six months after the revolution which had ousted Omar al-Bashir from power and ended thirty years of unchallenged reign.

Victory against political Islam hailed

“Hourriya, salam, adalah”, Freedom, peace, justice. “Three words chanted by the actors of the Sudanese revolution”, declared the French president at the opening of the summit, paying tribute to a transition which he qualified as the first victory in the region against political Islam. “Your revolution is also singular because it is post-Islamist, because it put an end for the first time in the whole region to a regime using the weapon of political Islam to cover up its mistakes and to divide its people, ”he said. “In order to reach this horizon, it is important that the peace agreements be implemented as quickly as possible by all the parties,” he said.

Pursue economic reforms

He called on the leaders of Sudan to continue their “courageous economic reforms”. “The reduction of the Sudanese debt that we are going to initiate soon is a first result of these reforms, and this trajectory of Sudan’s return to the concert of nations should be consolidated,” he concluded. “Right decision at the right time. It is up to Sudan now and to the international community to show that the new Sudan is an opportunity for investors and no longer a hopeless case. The UN is ready to provide support, ”tweeted Volker Perthes, the special envoy for Sudan, after the announcement of the French commitment.

An example of transition

“France was one of the first countries to mobilize and support the experience of the Sudanese transition”, which it considers “as an example of democratic transition in Africa”, explained to AFP a source close to the ‘Elysium. “The stake of this summit, it will be to unite the international community around Sudan and to begin the treatment of the multilateral debt of Sudan”, one added the same source.

The debt in question

This country rich in oil and mining resources is drowning in an external debt of 60 billion dollars (more than 49 billion euros). The Covid-19 pandemic has hit an economy in recession for three years, with rampant inflation and which suffers from severe shortages of basic goods. A seasoned economist, Hamdok has already cleared debt with the World Bank with $ 1.15 billion in aid from the United States, which in December removed Sudan from the list of states funding terrorism, thus ending sanctions economic factors that kept it out of the international community. And Khartoum announced in early May that it had obtained a loan of $ 425 million financed by Sweden, the United Kingdom and Ireland to settle its arrears with the African Development Bank (AfDB).

There remains the subject of bilateral debt. A working session was scheduled for 5 pm to “move forward towards the remission of Sudan’s debt” with the Paris Club, its largest creditor at 38%. Debt restructuring, by restoring confidence, could pave the way for foreign investment in strategic sectors such as infrastructure, agriculture, energy, minerals and communications.