BEL­MOPAN-The Be­lize gov­ern­ment says it has reached an agree­ment with its cred­i­tors on re­struc­tur­ing the coun­try's US$544m for­eign debt, al­so known as the su­per bond. Prime Min­is­ter Dean Bar­row told a news con­fer­ence late Thurs­day night that while agree­ment has been reached "in prin­ci­ple," the de­tails of the agree­ment, in­clud­ing the pay­ment sched­ule will be worked out in the com­ing weeks. He said he ex­pect that the for­mal agree­ment will be pre­sent­ed in ear­ly Jan­u­ary.

"This agree­ment is com­pre­hen­sive, it is sus­tain­able, and it will pro­vide well in ex­cess of US$150 mil­lion in re­lief to Be­lize," Bar­row said, adding he could not give fur­ther de­tails. Prime Min­is­ter Bar­row thanked the speak­er of the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives Michael Peyri­fitte and the rene­go­ti­at­ing team head­ed by Am­bas­sador Mark Es­pat for the "tire­less work" they put in to achieve the agree­ment.

Ear­li­er this month, bond­hold­ers re­ject­ed an of­fer from the small Cen­tral Amer­i­can coun­try's gov­ern­ment on re­struc­tur­ing the debt and said they had hired lawyers af­ter the ex­piry of a re­prieve on le­gal ac­tion. Be­lize's re­vised pro­pos­al in­cludes a 40-year par bond with no prin­ci­pal re­duc­tion, a mort­gage-style re­pay­ment, a ten-year grace pe­ri­od and a coupon that pays 2.75 per cent dur­ing the first five years and 4.5 per cent there­after.

Al­so on the ta­ble is a 30-year dis­count bond with a 33 per cent prin­ci­pal re­duc­tion, a mort­gage-style re­pay­ment, a five-year grace pe­ri­od and a coupon that pays 4.5 per cent for the first five years and 6.75 per cent there­after. In late No­vem­ber, the cred­i­tors urged Be­lize to re­con­sid­er its re­struc­tur­ing pro­pos­als, not­ing that the bondghold­ers had of­fered US$150m-plus in debt re­lief over the next ten years ver­sus the ex­ist­ing 2029s and have pro­vid­ed the gov­ern­ment with enough flex­i­bil­i­ty to re­fi­nance at a lat­er stage.

This came in re­sponse to the coun­try's broad re­jec­tion of cred­i­tors' counter-pro­pos­al to the sov­er­eign's own new plan to re­struc­ture its debt. "While these im­proved on the sce­nar­ios pre­sent­ed in Au­gust, which asked for near-un­prece­dent­ed lev­els of debt re­lief, the com­mit­tee be­lieves they are not yet close to ac­cept­able bur­den-shar­ing or Be­lize's own long-term in­ter­est," the cred­i­tor com­mit­tee said in a state­ment.

Bond­hold­ers had said they want­ed three par op­tions to be con­sid­ered that would re­in­state the 8.5 per cent coupon af­ter ten years, in­stead of Be­lize's orig­i­nal pro­pos­al that would have de­liv­ered ef­fec­tive 80 per cent net present val­ue hair­cuts.

CMC