INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
Russia has defaulted on its overseas debt for the first time in more than a century after missing a Sunday deadline, reports suggest.Russia
has the money to make a $100m payment and is willing to pay, but sanctions made it impossible to get the payments to international
Russia says the money was sent to Euroclear, a bank which would then distribute the payment to investors.But that payment has been stuck
there, according to Bloomberg News, and creditors have not received it.Meanwhile, some Taiwanese holders of Russian bonds denominated in
euros have not received interest payments, according to the Reuters news agency, which cited two sources.The money had not arrived within 30
said it adheres to all sanctions.The last time Russia defaulted on its foreign debt was in 1918, during the Bolshevik Revolution when the
At the time Moscow failed to keep up payments on its domestic bonds but managed not to default on its overseas debt.Russia has seemed on an
inevitable path to default since sanctions were first imposed by the US and European Union following the invasion of Ukraine.These
world.The Russian government has said it wants to make all of its payments on time, and up until now it had succeeded.About $40bn of
decided not to renew the special exemption in sanctions rules allowing investors to receive interest payments from Russia, which expired on
25 May.The Kremlin now appears to have accepted this inevitability too, decreeing on 23 June stating that all future debt payments would be
made in roubles through a Russian bank, the National Settlements Depository, even when contracts state they should be in dollars or other
to the RIA Novosti news agency.This was for two reasons, he said
conducting any operations related to Russia
money to do it, he denied that this amounts to a genuine default, which usually occur when governments refuse to pay, or their economies are
Russia.Defaulting nations usually find it impossible to borrow any more money, but Russia is already effectively barred from borrowing in
Western markets by sanctions.In any case, it is reportedly earning around a billion dollars a day from fossil fuel exports, and Mr Siluanov
said in April the country had no plans to borrow more.Source: BBC--Agencies
This article first appeared/also appeared in https://adaderana.lk
