Ivory Coast issues $250mn bond for Infrastructure financing

Ivory Coast began the sale on Monday of an 8-year 120 billion CFA franc ($253.14 million) bond with a 6.55 percent coupon, one of the bond’s leading managers said.

The bond will be listed on West Africa’s BRMV bourse and marketed to investors across the region’s CFA currency zone from April 28 to May 15. It will be sold in units of 10,000 CFA.

“The bond will be used to finance the construction of infrastructure,” an official at Sogebourse, one of the leading managers of the bond issue and a subsidiary of Societe Generale’s local unit, told Reuters.

Ivory Coast, the world’s top cocoa producer and Frenchspeaking West Africa’s largest economy, is recovering from a decade-long political crisis that ended in a brief 2011 civil war.