Sovereign haircuts / ZWE
Zimbabwe
One concluded restructuring, settled in 1980. It cost creditors 0.0% of the present value of their claim, 15 years after the default that began in 1965.
Every restructuring
Two measures of the same deals, never combined. The present-value haircut discounts what creditors got against what they were owed; the face-value reduction counts only principal written off.
| Default | Settled | Years to settle | Present-value haircut | Face-value reduction | Debt treated (2020 $) | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1965 | 1980 | 15 | 0.0% | 18.8% | $834M | Meyer, Reinhart and Trebesch (2022) |
Source: Meyer, Reinhart & Trebesch (2022), Sovereign Bonds since Waterloo | Cruces & Trebesch (2013), Sovereign Defaults: The Price of Haircuts | Asonuma & Trebesch (2016) Debt treated is the amount restructured, deflated to constant 2020 US dollars in the source file. A negative haircut means the new instruments were worth more than the old claim. Methodology
Bond prices
1 of 1 Zimbabwe restructuring episode has Waterloo prices during the restructuring interval
price only, never pbid or pask, and shows one line per bond from one year before default to one year after settlement. The author README defines price as “bond price in GBP and USD”; it does not document normalization to face value. Across all 329 haircut episodes, 111 have no Waterloo country-code match and 177 start after Dec 1, 1980. Those two counts overlap.| Bond | Currency | ISIN | Obs. | First | Last |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Rhodesia & Nyasaland Dollar 5.75% of 1958, due 1973 | USD | not recorded | 76 | Jan 1, 1964 | Aug 1, 1972 |
waterloo_bonds.price only; pbid and pask are not averaged into it. The author README defines price as “bond price in GBP and USD” and does not document face-value normalization. GBP and USD observations use separate labelled panels and y-axes. Of the 329 episodes in the haircut file, 111 have no Waterloo country-code match and 177 start after 1980-12-01; these counts overlap. Later episodes show an absence message rather than an implied zero.Source: Meyer, Reinhart & Trebesch, Sovereign Bonds since Waterloo (bond-price panel) | Harvard Dataverse, Sovereign Bonds since Waterloo Methodology
Default spells
| Spell | From | To | Years | Restructurings |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| ZWE_1965-1980 | 1965 | 1980 | 16 | 1 |
Source: Meyer, Reinhart & Trebesch (2022), Sovereign Bonds since Waterloo | Cruces & Trebesch (2013), Sovereign Defaults: The Price of Haircuts | Asonuma & Trebesch (2016) Duration counts both endpoints. The spells table also carries a cumulative-haircut column; it is not published here because it does not reconcile with the per-episode haircuts, see the methodology. Methodology
Debt still in default
$8.60B across 7 creditor classes in 2024. A haircut can only be measured once a restructuring concludes, so any of this that is still being negotiated is by construction absent from the tables above.
| Creditor class | In default, 2024 |
|---|---|
| Other private creditors | $4.01B |
| Paris Club (bilateral official) | $1.78B |
| World Bank (IBRD) | $1.13B |
| China (official) | $591.0M |
| Other official creditors | $586.0M |
| World Bank (IDA) | $419.0M |
| Foreign-currency bonds | $87.0M |
Source: Bank of Canada-Bank of England Sovereign Default Database (CRAG) Bank of Canada terms (attribution). Includes domestic arrears, so it is not comparable with the debt-treated column above. Methodology
Restructurings with Chinese creditors
5 restructurings with Chinese creditors are recorded here. No haircut is attached to any of them, so they cannot be placed on the scale above; the file records only whether face value or the interest rate was cut.
| Year | Type | Creditor | Terms |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2003 | Debt rescheduling only | China Ex-Im Bank | First rescheduling of the 1997 China Ex-Im Bank buyer's credit to ZISCO. The agreement reduced interest rates by 300 bps. from 7 to 4 percent per year and extended the maturity by 3 years. |
| 2004 | Debt rescheduling only | China Ex-Im Bank | In 2004, China Ex-Im Bank restructured a RMB 48.2 mn Government Concessional Loan to the Government of Zimbabwe’s Industrial Development Commission (IDC). The loan carried the following original loan terms: a 15-year maturity, 5-year grace period, and 3% interest rate. The 2004 agreement reduced the interest rate by 100 bps. and extended the maturity by 4 years. |
| 2007 | Debt rescheduling only | China Ex-Im Bank | Second rescheduling of the 1997 buyer's credit loan to ZISCO that had already been restructured in 2003. The 2007 agreement introduced an additiona 3-year grace period. |
| 2010 | Debt rescheduling only | China Ex-Im Bank | Third rescheduling of the 1997 buyer's credit loan to ZISCO that had already been restructured in 2003 and 2007. The 2010 agreement extended the grace period by another 3 years. |
| 2012 | Debt rescheduling only | China Ex-Im Bank | In 2012, China Ex-Im Bank restructured a 2006 200 mn USD buyer's credit for an Agricultural Supply Project. The loan originally carried a 5-year grace period, an 11-year maturity and was supposed to be repaid by export procceds from platinum. The 2012 restructuring agreement granted an additional 3-year grace period after Zimbabwe had failed to repay the loan in time. |
Source: Horn, Reinhart & Trebesch, China's overseas lending and debt restructurings Methodology