"At this point, a debt restructuring agreement was basically reached," said the spokesman during the daily press conference of the Chinese MFA.
"The agreement is expected to be signed very soon," he added, quoted by financial information agency Bloomberg, adding that the China Export and Import Bank has offered assistance for emergency financial assistance through the International Monetary Fund (IMF), but without giving details.
The spokesman noted that "China is doing its best to help Angola deal with the difficulties," specifying that unofficial creditors are also in "active consultations" with Angola.
Angola's President, João Lourenço, according to Bloomberg, spoke Friday with his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping.
Following the decision by the three rating agencies to lower their opinion on the quality of Angola's sovereign credit, the Finance Ministry issued a statement on Friday confirming negotiations with China for debt relief, but without confirming the figures or deadlines involved.
The Angolan authorities are "making progress in implementing the reformulation of profiles of some oil-backed financing facilitators, a decision taken to better reflect the current market environment and provide considerable debt relief, while maintaining the obtaining of oil in the long term," according to the document.
The cost of servicing Angola's public debt is expected to approach 7 billion dollars, or 12.3 percent of GDP, this year, but 2.5 billion dollars in bilateral debt is expected to be restructured, following the agreement reached with the Paris Club, which will serve as an example to other official creditors, notably China, which holds more than 40 percent of the country's external debt, Fitch Ratings adds in its latest assessment of the country's economy.
The remaining 4.4 billion dollars is to be paid "through a combination of multilateral loans, recourse to the sovereign fund and foreign reserves.
