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.
  

