March 2 (SeeNews) - On Friday, Croatia will offer institutional investors 500 million euro ($530 million) worth of its first ever bond issue primarily intended for retail investors, in a second round of subscription for the debt paper, finance minister Marko Primorac said on Thursday.
If the amount on offer gets fully subscribed, the value of the bond issue will reach 1.8 billion euro, Primorac said in a statement. The initial target value was set at 1.0 billion euro.
Retail investors were able to subscribe bonds from the new issue from February 22 to March 1, while institutional investors can do so on March 3, when the final details of the issue will be announced.
Some 43,600 individuals subscribed and paid in 1.3 billion euro ($1.4 billion) worth of bonds, Primorac told public television HRT on Wednesday evening. Additional bonds are being offered to institutional investors in order to provide liquidity for the issue on the secondary market within the next two years, he added.
“We are glad that the response of individuals was very good and we are going to continue with similar issues,” Primorac said in the statement, adding that another government bond issue intended for retail investors is unlikely this year. Taking into account the structure of existing domestic public debt, the government would rather issue debt paper with a longer maturity, of up to 10 years, intended for local and foreign institutional investors, he said.
Croatia's finance ministry has set at 3.25% the minimum annual interest rate on the retail bond. The issue date of the bond is March 8 and the maturity date falls on March 8, 2025.
($ = 0.945 euro)