Free up over $ 11 b in State-owned assets to ease reserves crisis: Experts

The reserves-strapped Government can free up State-owned commercial assets worth over $ 11 billion to tide with the current and future cash flow crisis, experts said yesterday.

“We have $ 52 billion of debt and assets of $ 520 billion so our country’s loan to value ratio is 10%. To bring our solvency back we need to re-capitalise our country and we can do so by freeing up some capital tied up in state-owned assets,” experts pointed out, stressing that the country is not bankrupt but only insolvent.

“We can also create more headroom by restructuring our debt to sustainable levels. We must then look to push our Government revenues up and cut back our wasteful expenditure,” they said, adding that the Government must also find solutions to increase net inflows by four billion dollars in the short to medium term.