As in 1918 and in 1998, Russia did not refund a claim, Wednesday, starting a countdown of thirty days before a formal defect.
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All day, Wednesday, March 16, the creditors waited and a real suspense has settled. After 1918 and 1998, Russia again was going to be in default? The Russian government was scheduled to pay $ 117 million (€ 106 million) of interest on two bonds. Was he going to do it? Shortly after lunch, the Russian Minister of Finance, Anton Silouanov, added to the confusion: he promised that the payment was “in progress”, but because of the American sanctions, “the money [was] not yet Past “.
The smoke screen has finally not enough to hide the essentials. At the end of the day, according to our information, the money had not been received by the creditors. De facto, the Russian Federation did not honor its repayment deadline. “The Vladimir Putin regime becomes a rotten borrower [” Rogue Borrower “]”, esteem Maximilian Hess, specialist in sovereign debt issues at Foreign Policy Research Institute, an American think group.
Technically, Moscow has a period of grace of thirty days to catch up. The rating agencies will therefore announce the failure to pay that on April 15, if no payment has taken place by then.
But the symbol is there: kneeling after the economic sanctions, the Russian state has not been capable or did not want to repay its debt. It is relegated to the rank of Belize or Suriname, the last two countries failed. For Russia, it is a return to 1918, the last time it has not reimbursed a foreign currency loan. In 1998, undergoing a serious economic crisis, the country had failed its rubles, then decreeing a moratorium on its currency loans.
Do not pay the creditors, a kind of counter-sanction
“This is the first step of a thirty-day way to perdition, continues Mr. Hess. The previous ones are not good for countries who lack repayment deadlines, but the situation is relatively unique.”
Unique, because this default does not look like those other than other countries have known. “This is a choice of the Russian state,” said March 10 Sergei Guriev, former economic adviser to the Russian government, refugees in France since 2012. If the economic sanctions are heavy, and the foreign currency reserves From the Russian central bank are frozen, Moscow continues to sell its oil and gas, with about $ 700 million a day. Pick up in these sums, especially for the low payment of $ 117 million, would have been possible.
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