PH working on multi-tenor eurobond sale

Less a month since its return to Japan’s debt market, the Duterte administration announced its second foreign commercial borrowing for the year through a euro-denominated bond sale.

In a notice released by the Bureau of the Treasury on Monday, April 19, the government said the Philippines is now working on tapping the euro debt market following the 55 billion yen Samurai bond offering in late March.

BNP PARIBAS, Credit Suisse, Goldman Sachs, J.P. Morgan, Nomura, and Standard Chartered Bank are joint lead managers and joint bookrunners for the transaction.

The Philippines is looking selling an undetermined amount of four-, 12-, or 20-year eurobonds, the Treasury notice said.

The Duterte administration had made a similar offering in January last year, raising 1.2 billion euros from the country’s first ever zero coupon three-year eurobond.

Finance Secretary Carlos G. Dominguez III said earlier this month that now was a good time to borrow offshore, "while rates are still relatively low.”

In March, the government also raised ₱463.3 billion from the sale of IOUs targeted at local small investors.

About ₱411.8 billion of the total proceeds were used for the government’s budgetary purposes while the remaining ₱51.5 billion were earmarked to swap current securities with the new retail bonds.

The retail treasury bonds was the government’s first issuance this year.

In 2021, the national government programmed a total of ₱3.03 trillion in borrowings. Of that amount, foreign financing like bond issuances and development loans cornered ₱442.4 billion, or roughly $9.1 billion.