SARAJEVO (Bosnia and Herzegovina), October 21 (SeeNews) – Bosnia’s Muslim-Croat Federation said it decided on Wednesday to issue 347 million marka ($265 million/177 million euro) in government bonds to compensate holders of pre-war foreign currency deposits.
The bonds will mature in six years and will bear an annual coupon of 2.5%, the Federation government said in a statement. The issue date is September 30.
This will be the first such issue out of six series (A,B,C,D,E,F), the statement added.
Many depositors in the former Yugoslav Federation, of which Bosnia was part until 1992, lost their foreign currency savings held with local banks during the wars in Yugoslavia in the 1990s. The successor states of former Yugoslavia recognised as their own state debt the lost deposits held by banks that were registered on their respective territories.
The Muslim-Croat Federation is one of the two autonomous parts forming Bosnia after the 1992-95 war, and the other is the Serb Republic. They have their own governments, parliaments and fiscal systems. Bosnia also has weaker central legislative and executive institutions overarching them.
The Serb Republic issued in February last year its own bonds to compensate pre-war holders of foreign currency deposits. The bond issue is worth 209.7 million marka, has maturity of five years and carries an annual coupon of 2.5%. The bonds are traded on Bosnia’s other bourse, the Banja Luka Stock Exchange.
(1 euro = 1.95583 Bosnian marka)