(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.”
To contact the reporters on this story: Taonga Clifford Mitimingi in Lusaka at tmitimingi@bloomberg.net;Matthew Hill in Johannesburg at mhill58@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Paul Richardson at pmrichardson@bloomberg.net, Michael Gunn
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