With a 60-day re­prieve from bond­hold­ers owed US$544 mil­lion ex­pir­ing to­mor­row, Be­lize's gov­ern­ment re­leased two new pro­pos­als yes­ter­day de­tail­ing how it could re­struc­ture the coun­try's debt, in­ter­na­tion­al wire ser­vices re­port­ed.

Be­lize and its cred­i­tors have been ne­go­ti­at­ing a debt re­struc­tur­ing ever since the Cari­com na­tion de­fault­ed in Sep­tem­ber, a month af­ter it failed to make a pay­ment on its debt. Be­lize paid on­ly half of an over­due in­ter­est pay­ment in Sep­tem­ber, say­ing that its econ­o­my did not al­low it to do more.

In its first pub­lic re­struc­tur­ing pro­pos­al since the de­fault, Be­lize is ask­ing its cred­i­tors to for­give 33 per cent of what they are owed, or al­low the coun­try to de­lay debt pay­ments for 10 years. The terms are more favourable to cred­i­tors than the pre­vi­ous re­struc­tur­ing pro­pos­al, in which Be­lize asked bond­hold­ers to for­give 45 per cent of what they are owed, or al­low the coun­try to de­lay any debt pay­ments for 15 years.

"They're push­ing for a pret­ty ag­gres­sive hair­cut" in the lat­est pro­pos­al, Moody's In­vestors Ser­vices an­a­lyst Ed­ward Al-Hus­sainy said, ac­cord­ing to a Wall Street Jour­nal re­port. Be­lize has ar­gued it needs the debt re­struc­tur­ing to close fi­nanc­ing gaps from pay­ments for com­pa­ny na­tion­al­i­sa­tions, de­creased tourism and de­clin­ing oil rev­enues.

On No­vem­ber 21, Be­lize re­ceived a coun­ter­pro­pos­al from the cred­i­tors' com­mit­tee. The three sce­nar­ios all pro­posed tem­porar­i­ly re­duc­ing the bond's cur­rent coupon rate while ex­tend­ing the life of the bond, and even­tu­al­ly re­turn­ing to the cur­rent 8.5 per cent coupon, ac­cord­ing to the state­ment. How­ev­er, Be­lize said the cred­i­tors' pro­pos­al doesn't pro­vide enough debt re­lief.