Page 7 African private sector, with the exception of supplier credits in Sudan. The WDTs also narrowly define private non-guaranteed borrowers as entities that are majority privately-owned and have received no guarantees from public entities in the borrowing country. Because of this strict interpretation, which eliminates state-owned enterprises, including large local commercial banks and productive enterprises, private sector borrowing appears in only 12 of the 44 Sub-Saharan African countries during the 1980s.

Nevertheless, because long-term finance provided by suppliers is deemed to be marginal in relation to the banks' share, the WDTs' assumption is plausible. Moreover, other long-term lenders to private sector projects, with the exception of the International Finance Corporation, such as export credit agencies and other quasi-donor institutions, have only recently begun to modify policies that require sovereign or state guarantees, which would change the profile of longterm borrowing by type of borrower.

The share of private borrowers in total Sub-Saharan African commercial bank long term debt stocks remained steady at 25-30% between 1980-1988. However, partly on the strength of the WDTs' overstated figures on C6te d'Ivoire's private sector borrowing, by 1988 private borrowers accounted for 70% of new disbursements and 50% of the region's debt service payments. In the most recent period 1986-88, both net flows and net transfers to private borrowers were reported as positive, representing a cumulative $1.8 billion and $350 million, respectively. This contrasts sharply with the net flow deficit of $1.6 billion and net transfer deficit of $4.6 billiorn experienced by public borrowers for the same three-year period.

Nevertheless, these more robust flows to the private sector were also heavily concentrated. The Ivoirian private sector's net flows of $1.1 billion between 1986-88 must be discounted to a large extent, while the WDTs show that private borrowers in Kenya, Mauritius, Mozambique, Niger and Zimbabwe accounted for a cumulative net flows surplus of only $420 million. All other private borrowers experience **d** eficits in net flows, for a cumulative deficit of $180 million over the 3-year period.

The record on net transfers is similar. The Ivoirian private sector is shown to have received positive net transfers totalling $492 million in 1986-88. All other private borrowers in all countries except Kenya, Niger, Mozambique and Zimbabwe, which registered modest positive transfers, experienced cumulative deficits of $373 million. While Cameroon's private sector received substantial disbursements of $650 million in 1985-88, they were outweighed by over $1 billion in debt servicing.

Thus, while in aggregate terms private borrowers have fared much better than public borrowers and/or have performed better on their obligations, most of the modest surplus for the period under review was concentrated in five countries.

The Maturity and Sectoal DistributionL Reoots of the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) provide a more nuanced view of the pattern of commercial bank long-term and short-term lending (Table 11). Private sector borrowing appears in nearly every country and accounts for more than 50% of the total in 25