Mali has defaulted on more than $31 million of bond payments, as sanctions imposed over elections delayed by the country’s military junta took effect.
The defaults add to mounting troubles for Mali, which has experienced two coups since August 2020 and has struggled for years to stem an Islamist insurgency that has drawn in foreign powers including former colonial ruler France.
Mali failed to repay 15.6 billion CFA francs or $26.6 million, in relation to a treasury bond that matured on Jan. 31, the debt agency of West Africa’s monetary union zone said in a note to investors.
Mali’s finance ministry and the West African debt management agency said on Wednesday, that this payment incident occurs in a context where the state of Mali is subject to sanctions.
Mali’s finance ministry earlier said that the country had failed to meet a debt payment of 2.7 billion CFA francs on treasury bond coupons, blaming the ECOWAS sanctions and those imposed by the BCEAO central bank that administers the CFA franc.
The ministry said the deadline to meet the coupon payments on two sets of bonds had passed on Jan. 28 with it unable to comply with its obligations because of measures that have largely cut it off from regional financial markets.
The 15-member ECOWAS economic bloc and the UEMOA regional monetary union both imposed sanctions on Mali on Jan. 9 after the military junta that first seized power in a 2020 coup decided to delay a national election.
ECOWAS has also frozen Malian state assets in its member states’ commercial banks and suspended non-essential financial transactions with Mali.
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