According to three people with firsthand knowledge of the situation, formal debt negotiations between the government of Ghana and foreign bondholders are now underway as a result of advisors to both parties signing non-disclosure agreements.
The West African nation, which stopped making payments on the majority of its foreign debt last year, has chosen Lazard as its financial advisor, with Rothschild & Co, serving as the representative of several global private lenders, and According to statistics from Refinitiv, Ghana’s dollar-denominated debt has maturities spanning from 2023 to 2061 and is more than $13 billion.
Both parties are prohibited from disclosing any material covered by the agreement with any unauthorized person after signing the NDAs earlier this month.
One of the sources, who asked to remain unnamed because the discussions are secret, claimed that the government and the bondholders were exchanging sensitive information via the advisers, including the potential income for debt service and the restructuring goals of the creditors.
Ghana, which is going through its worst economic crisis in a generation, has already agreed to write down its internal debt and has asked to have its bilateral debt renegotiated under the common framework platform backed by the Group of 20 major economies.