Tunisia Gets New Loans From Japanese Capital Market

Tunisia is to get a loan of $460 million (50 billion yens) from the Japanese capital market with a 3.6% interest, reports the Panafrican news agency "PANA."

The deal, the ninth of the kind, followed an agreement signed Monday in Tunis by the governor of the Tunisian central bank, Mohamed Beji Hamda, and the vice- president of Merrill Lynch-Europe, Reginald Bartholomew.

It will enable Tunisia to take 35 billion yens of loan repayable over 10 years and 15 billion yens over 30 years.

PANA further explains that since its first intervention in 1994, on the international capital market, Tunisia has been able to take some three billion Dinars (about 23 million dollars), "thus contributing to the improvement of its debt structure," Hamda said.

He said that Tunisia reimbursed in February and March some 500 million dinars (about 40 million dollars) of Japanese loans.