PARIBAS SEEKING TO ADJUST ECUADOR OIL FACILITY
Banque Paribas, which arranged a 220
mln dlr loan for Ecuador last year to pre-finance oil exports,
wants to adjust the terms of the facility to help the country
recover from a devastating earthquake, bankers said.
    But the French bank's plan, which would effectively
postpone repayment of about 30 mln dlrs of the loan for several
months, is running into stiff resistance from many of the 52
members of the loan syndicate.
    The pipeline that carries all Ecuador's oil exports was
ruptured in the March 5 tremor and will take some five months
to repair at a cost of about 150 mln dlrs to repair.
    President Leon Febres Cordero on Friday estimated total
damages caused by the quake at one billion dlrs and said that
Ecuador as a result would maintain January's suspension of
interest payments on its foreign commercial bank debt.
    Payments were halted in January because of the drop in the
price of oil, which accounts for nearly two-thirds of Ecuador's
export earnings and 60 pct of government revenue.
    Although sympathetic to Ecuador's plight, many banks in the
Paribas facility feel that emergency financial relief is a job
for international financial organizations and not for
commercial banks, bankers said.
    The 18-month oil-financing facility, which was signed last
October 28, is one of the few purely voluntary credits for a
Latin American nation since the region's debt crisis erupted in
August 1982.
    Because it was a voluntary deal, many bankers feel strongly
that the orginal terms must be adhered to. Otherwise, they
fear, the gradual re-establishment of normal market conditions
for Latin borrowers will be set back.
    "There's a lot of reluctance by the other banks. They feel
it's a different facility, and so any kind of suggestion of a
restructuring would look bad," one banker commented.
 Reuter
