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Nigeria Plans to Sell Eurobonds in Second Week of October - BLOOMBERG
BY , Bloomberg News
Business district of Lagos, Nigeria. Photographer: George Osodi/Bloomberg , Photographer: George Osodi/Bloomberg
(Bloomberg) -- Nigeria, Africa’s biggest economy, will raise about $3 billion selling Eurobonds in the second week of October, the country’s finance minister said.
The government has approval to raise $6.1 billion from overseas, “so we are looking at doing half of that in the Eurobond market and the other half from bilateral and multilateral sources,” Finance Minister Zainab Ahmed said in a Bloomberg TV interview. “Depending on how the market goes, maybe we can do a little bit more,” she said.
The government is working to reduce its debt-service burden by increasing revenue, restructuring its debt portfolio through the conversion of expensive short-term notes into longer tenors and also reducing its overall borrowing, Ahmed said.
Proceeds from the sale -- the first international sale since 2018 -- will help the oil-dependent economy finance projects planned in the 2021 budget and shore up its foreign-exchange reserves, which has come under pressure from lower oil prices and production. The government expects a 2021 budget deficit of 5.60 trillion naira to be financed largely from foreign and local borrowings.
The West African nation last month appointed JPMorgan Chase & Co., Citigroup Global Markets, Standard Chartered Bank and Goldman Sachs Group Inc. as international bookrunners and joint lead managers for the Eurobond offering.
