Philippines issues $2.35 billion retail bond

The Philippine government sold five-year retail treasury bonds with a fixed coupon rate of 4.875%, raising an initial 120.764 billion pesos ($2.35 billion).

A notice released by the Bureau of the Treasury stated that holders of fixed-rate Treasury notes maturing on March 14 and July 4 can also trade their holdings for the peso-denominated 2027 retail bonds.

A total of 183.44 billion pesos in offers were received, six times the 30 billion pesos that had been offered in the auction.

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The newest retail bond sale, according to National Treasurer Rosalia De Leon, is part of the government’s borrowing plan for this year, which aims to raise up to 2.2 trillion pesos, around 75% of which will come from the domestic market.

At an online launch of the offer, she explained that maintaining a bias toward domestic sources of finance not only protects the government from foreign exchange concerns but that it also allows it to make use of the (central bank’s) support to maintain an accommodating monetary stance.

To keep the recovery going, the central bank has stated its intention to maintain policy assistance ahead of Thursday’s meeting.

With last year’s two retail treasury bond sales, the government raised more than 830 billion pesos, which was used to fund economic resilience and pandemic response measures, according to De Leon.