“On May 25 our license for the right to pay foreign debts (in dollars) expires. On the 26th they will say that we do not have that right, and then they will say that Russia has not paid its debts,” he said.
“We will pay foreign investors in rubles if they close the western infrastructure to us” to do it in dollars, he stressed.
The Bloomberg agency affirmed that the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) of the US Department of the Treasury will probably let the license that serves as an exception and that was approved shortly after the imposition of US sanctions against Russia for its military intervention in Ukraine, expire. .
This permission allowed Russia to pay interest and avoid a default on its state debt.
Until now, it has been able to avoid a suspension of payments after at the end of April it managed to pay the coupons of two Eurobonds due in 2022 and 2024 for 649 million dollars at the last minute after resorting to its reserve in this currency.
He first tried to pay the interest in rubles through the Russian depository entity NSD, which has been rejected by the international depository Euroclear.
As of February 1, the country’s external public debt totaled 59.5 billion dollars, including 38.97 billion for external loans in bonds.
In total, Russia currently has 15 active bonds with maturities from 2022 to 2047.
World Bank will allocate an additional 12,000 million dollars to combat food crisis
Meanwhile, the World Bank (WB) announced on Wednesday that it will allocate an additional 12,000 million dollars in the next 15 months to projects to combat the world food crisis, aggravated by the war in Ukraine.
Most of the resources will go to countries in Africa, the Middle East, Eastern Europe and Central and South Asia, the World Bank said in a statement.
He added that the funds will support agriculture, provide “social protection to cushion the effects of rising food prices” and promote water supply and irrigation projects.
With information from EFE and AFP.