The Colombian government sold 45 billion yen (US$500 million) worth of 10-year bonds in Tokyo to finance its 2009 budget, Finance Minister Oscar Ivan Zuluaga said Wednesday.
The new bonds, which were sold at par, will yield 2.42%, Zuluaga said in a press conference in Bogota. The sale is part of a plan to diversify financing sources, he added.
The government will swap the proceeds of the bond sale into dollars, but won’t change the dollars into pesos, he said.
“We don’t want to take the currency risk,” Zuluaga said. The government needs dollars to pay its dollar-denominated expenditures such as interest payments and weapons, he added.
Last month, Zuluaga had said the government was halting peso purchases to limit the currency appreciation.
Yen-denominated bonds issued in Japan by foreign borrowers are called Samurai bonds.
The bonds are guaranteed by the Japan Bank for International Cooperation and were lead managed by Mitsubishi UFJ Securities and Daiwa Securities SMBC.
The sale is the first bond offering by Colombia in Japan since 2005, when the country also issued bonds in a similar JBIC-backed private placement.
The new bonds will replace borrowing from multilateral lenders that was scheduled this year.
Zuluaga said the government doesn’t plan to carry out this year any more borrowing for its 2010 needs. (Dow Jones)