“We will go to court, because we have taken all the necessary measures so that investors receive their payments”, declared the minister to the daily Izvestia.
“Russia tried in good faith to pay external creditors by transferring the corresponding amounts in foreign currency to pay our debt. However, the deliberate policy of Western countries is to artificially create a default by all means,” the minister said.
“If an economic and financial war is waged against our country, we are obliged to react, fulfilling all our obligations,” he added. The minister said that Russia’s external debt amounts to about 4.7 trillion rubles, which is equivalent to $56.7 billion, or 20% of the total public debt.
“We will present our invoices to the court confirming our efforts to pay both in foreign currency and in rubles. It will not be an easy process. We will have to prove our position very actively, despite all the difficulties,” he added, without specifying which legal body Russia would turn to.
According to S&P, this is equivalent to a “selective default” (selective default), which is declared when a country, institution or company defaults on any of its obligations but not on its global debt. In theory, Russia still has a so-called “grace period” of thirty days from that date of April 4 to make its principal and interest payments, but S&P considers it very unlikely that it will be useful. “We do not expect at this time that investors will be able to convert ruble payments into dollars for an amount equivalent to the amounts due, nor that the government will be able to convert those payments in that thirty-day period,” the company says.
Standard and Poor’s reasons that this is because sanctions against Russia are likely to tighten in the coming weeks, “hindering Russia’s will and technical ability to meet the terms and conditions to honor its obligations.”
Source: Ambito
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