Between 2009 and the pandemic, South Africa’s new external debt commitments from official creditors have generally featured lower interest rates and shorter maturities than from private creditors. In part, this reflected concessional terms on multilateral loans. Since the pandemic, the relative maturity of official external debt to private external debt has changed, with private creditor loans typically associated with shorter maturities. Notice the very large spike in interest on new official loans in 2015, around the time of Nene-gate.
