The planned Eurobonds issue should be floated on the international markets in the first quarter, the head of the Debt and Liquidity Management Agency Daniel Bytcanek disclosed. As we reported earlier, the issue should have €1 billion volume and a maturity period of fifteen years. Bytcanek underlined that the new debt was floated with the primary purpose of attracting new investors in Slovak sovereign debt instruments rather than to finance the deficit of the state budget. He noted that the planned adoption of the euro in 2009 was expected to cause a change of the type of investors, interested in Slovak debt and thus the Eurobonds should accommodate such demand. In addition, Bytcanek pointed out that ARDAL would fix a low cost of financing by floating the bonds at the present time as interest rates were projected to go up. Slovakia also should be able to secure relatively low risk premium on its foreign debt, benefiting from relatively high credit ratings, specifically from the recent one notch upgrade by Standard&Poor’s to A/Stable.
