Bosnia's Federation To Issue 177 Mln Euro Pre-war Savings Compensation Bonds by Yr-end - Media

The bonds will have a maturity of seven years and will carry an annual coupon of 2.5%, daily newspaper Nezavisne Novine quoted officials from the Federation’s finance ministry as saying. They will also be traded on the Sarajevo Stock Exchange (SASE).

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 corresponding central institutions overarching them.

The Serb Republic issued in February its own bonds to compensate pre-war hard-currency depositors worth 209.7 million marka with a maturity of five years and an annual coupon of 2.5%. The bonds are traded on Bosnia’s other bourse, the Banja Luka Stock Exchange (BLSE).

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 registered on their respective territories.

(1 euro = 1.95583 Bosnian marka)