(Bloomberg) -- Zambia’s vice president dismissed criticism of the country’s rapidly growing debt as part of a smear campaign to force the government from power.
“The issue of Zambian debt is being dramatized -- Zambia’s debt is being taken out of proportion,” Inonge Wina told lawmakers Friday in Lusaka, the capital. “Zambia’s debt has become a camouflage, a tool to destabilize Zambian people’s confidence in their government and to force a regime change.” She described those behind the alleged campaign as unspecified “champions of international capital.”
The southern African country’s external borrowing has nearly doubled since the end of 2014 to $9.4 billion, with the International Monetary Fund saying it’s at high risk of debt distress. The World Bank on Thursday urged the government to recognize “the enormity of the problems.”
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