New Treasury bills coming

Ministry of Finance “testing the market”

The Ministry of Finance plans to issue lira-denominated debt notes to exchange Treasury bills that mature this June. The new T-bills will have a maturity period ranging from seven to ten years. “We are currently testing the market,” said Alain Bifani, General Director of the Ministry of Finance. The new notes will be issued within the next few weeks.

Gross public debt stood at $57.7 billion at the end of the first quarter of 2013, of which the equivalent of $33.6 billion is in lira.

The banking sector holds the bulk of local currency notes (50.6 percent), as of end-March. The rest are held by the Central Bank (32.4 percent) and the non-banking sector (17 percent).
The latest ten-year T-Bills auction, held last September, had raised LL1.15 trillion (about $700 million). The high yield issue which had paid a rate of 8.24 percent was met with strong appetite from local banks.