MINSK, 14 June (BelTA) – Belarus will surely honor its commitments to foreign creditors, BelTA learned from Belarusian First Deputy Finance Minister Maxim Yermolovich after an expanded-participation session of the Budget and Finance Commission of the House of Representatives of the National Assembly of Belarus on 14 June.
The official said: “We are getting ready to redeem $800 million [worth of eurobonds] early next year. While we have a source for the redemption money in the form of state budget leftovers in government accounts in the National Bank, we are going to take measures to raise funds on the international capital market without draining the gold and foreign exchange reserves. We now have to go through all the preparatory stages in order to understand what instruments we are going to use in order to raise the funds. But I can guarantee that next year we will honor our commitments to foreign creditors just the way we've been doing it for the last ten years at least.”
Maxim Yermolovich explained that managing the state debt is part of the Finance Ministry's daily routine. “Among other things we take preparatory steps for floating government bonds both on the home market and international ones. The sources of funding can be versatile. For instance, we are in negotiations with colleagues in Russia. A program with the Eurasian Fund for Stabilization and Development is in progress. Some headway has been made into domestic sources for refinancing the state debt commitments,” noted the official.
BelTA reported earlier that Belarus intends to refinance $800 million worth of eurobonds, which are supposed to be redeemed in early January 2018, and continues working on floating a new emission of eurobonds with this in mind.
In 2011 Belarus floated $800 million worth of eurobonds with the interest rate of 8.95% and the redemption date of 26 January 2018.
