Reuters
Debt levels in Sub-Saharan Africa are set to fall after a string of sovereign defaults, but new financing is still expensive and hard to come by, forcing spending cuts and endangering growth, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) said on Friday. It noted that Ivory Coast, Benin and Kenya returned to international capital markets this year with issuances of so-called eurobonds, ending a two-year absence from markets for the region, but at much higher interest rates. "The return to market is really very important - we call it a pricey recovery, because we don't want to give the impression that the funding squeeze is over," said African Department Director Abebe Selassie.