July 29 (SeeNews) - Romania's finance ministry said on Friday it plans to auction 4 billion lei ($995 million/897 million euro) in government securities in August, as well as to sell an additional 435 million lei in non-competitive offers.
The ministry plans to hold one tender for 300 million lei in six-month T-bills, 800 million lei in one-year notes and six T-bond auctions with outstanding maturities ranging between 2.7 and 11 years.
In July, the ministry sold 3.23 billion lei in government debt and an additional 255 million lei in non-competitive offers, in line with the initial target.
"Except for the first auction scheduled for 1st of August, which could be challenging given the large amount and the long term dated tenor - 500 million lei in 11 Y T-bonds, we think that the public debt auction plan set for August is feasible provided that the sentiment on foreign markets does not worsen," Raiffeisen Bank commented on Friday in a daily market report.
For their part, ING Bank analysts note that the average planned maturity of the papers issued stands at 5.1 years, a big difference versus the previous months, the longest in a year and a half.
"Given the recent interest for the long-end of the curve, the calendar should be met with good demand, but this is largely dependent on global sentiment swings in the following weeks," ING said in a daily snapshot of the financial markets.
So far this year, the ministry has sold roughly 28.7 billion lei ibn local currency securities and 775 million euro in euro-denominated domestic debt and tapped 2.25 billion euro on global markets.
Romania's debt issuance plan for 2016 envisages domestic debt sales of some 48-50 billion lei, including 14-15 billion lei in T-bills and 34-35 billion lei in T-bonds.
The finance ministry also raised the ceiling of its Medium Term Notes programme launched in 2011 to 20 billion euro from 18 billion euro. Thus, Romania is to issue some 6.2 billion euro in Eurobonds in 2016 and 2017.
(1 euro=4.4615 lei)