Allowed Time To Pay

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31249, 22 December 1966, Page 13

Allowed Time To Pay

(N.Z. Press Assn.—Copyright) PARIS, December 21.

A seven-nation consortium of industrialised nations yesterday agreed to allow Indonesia to delay repayment of about 357 million United States dollars of its debt, informed sources reported, according to the Associated Press.

The formal agreement was expected to be signed soon. It resulted from two days of negotiations by an Indones-

ian delegation which won high praise from the delegates across the table. Indonesia owes about 2.2 thousand million United States dollars to the consortium and the Eastern bloc, informed sources said. About half this is owed to the consortium, which includes the United States, Britain. France, Germany, Italy, Holland and Japan. The rest is owed to the Soviet Union and other European countries.

The 357 million dollars is past, due, or due in 1967. It was this sum which was consolidated and re-scheduled for payment between 1971 and 1979.

Indonesia will still have to let interest mount until 1971, the sources said, but the overall terms of interest were left open for negotiation. One seasoned negotiator of economic contracts said that as far as he remembers, no other country in trouble had received such generous treatment from a group of lending nations.

Indonesia received considerable advice from the International Monetary Fund in trying to get back on its economic feet. But she reportedly will still have a severe balance of payments problem.