BEL­MOPAN, Be­lize-Be­lize Prime Min­is­ter Dean Bar­row has an­nounced that the coun­try has reached an agree­ment in prin­ci­ple with cred­i­tors to re­struc­ture about half of its un­paid debt af­ter "long and ar­du­ous" talks. Bar­row told a re­cent press con­fer­ence that de­tails of the re­struc­tur­ing of the US$548.3 mil­lion bond would be re­leased at a lat­er date but he de­scribed the agree­ment as "com­pre­hen­sive" and "sus­tain­able".

Be­lize missed an Au­gust 20 US$23 mil­lion coupon pay­ment on its US dol­lar step-up bonds due 2029 and earned it­self a sov­er­eign cred­it rat­ings down­grade from Stan­dard & Poor's, which deemed the Caribbean coun­try to be in de­fault on its debt.

In Sep­tem­ber Be­lize made an US$11.7 mil­lion in­ter­est pay­ment, al­though not with­in the 30-day grace pe­ri­od giv­en by bond­hold­ers it still earned it a 60-day re­prieve from bond­hold­ers. Ma­jor cred­i­tors agreed to re­frain from tak­ing le­gal reme­dies against Be­lize to al­low re­struc­tur­ing ne­go­ti­a­tions on the US$550 mil­lion su­per­bond to con­tin­ue.

Dur­ing that pe­ri­od Be­lize re­leased two re­struc­tur­ing pro­pos­als on No­vem­ber 29 that asked cred­i­tors to for­give 33 per cent of what they are owed, or al­low the coun­try to de­lay debt pay­ments for ten years but both pro­pos­als were re­ject­ed by cred­i­tors at the time.

Mark Es­pat, leader of Be­lize's ne­go­ti­at­ing team on the debt re­struc­tur­ing, has said that there is now an in-prin­ci­ple agree­ment with the Cred­i­tor Steer­ing Com­mit­tee and de­tails will be ironed out in the com­ing days. He ex­plained that de­tails of the deal could not be made pub­lic un­til they were ex­plained to all of Be­lize's cred­i­tors.

Ne­go­ti­at­ing with Be­lize is a cred­i­tors' com­mit­tee com­prised of Grey­lock Cap­i­tal Man­age­ment, Stead­fast In­sur­ance Co., Cap­i­tal Mar­kets Fi­nan­cial Ser­vices and the Trinidad and To­ba­go Unit Trust Corp, as well as an ad hoc group con­sist­ing of 20 in­sti­tu­tion­al mem­bers. To­geth­er, the com­mit­tee and ad hoc group rep­re­sent over US$338 mil­lion of the bonds out­stand­ing.

Ac­cord­ing to The Wall Street Jour­nal, a com­mit­tee ad­vis­er who asked not to be iden­ti­fied said: "The com­mit­tee is pleased with the progress of the ne­go­ti­a­tions over the past few weeks and will now be work­ing with the mem­bers of the ad hoc group and the gov­ern­ment of Be­lize to achieve clo­sure." The Step-Up Bond is said to rep­re­sent ap­prox­i­mate­ly one-half of Be­lize's to­tal record­ed pub­lic in­debt­ed­ness.

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