The Asian Development Bank plans to raise $6 billion to $8 billion from bond markets next year, around the same level as expected this year, a senior official of the agency said on May 07.
For this year, the ADB plans to issue at least $1 billion in US dollar-denominated benchmark bonds, including some carrying a maturity of three to 10 years, Juan Limandibrata, head of funding at the ADB's Treasury Department, told Reuters.
The bank also plans to issue around 1 billion yuan ($130 million) in yuan-denominated bonds in China late this year or early in 2008, Limandibrata said.
The yuan-denominated bonds, or so-called panda bonds, will likely carry a maturity of 5 to 10 years, depending on market conditions, he said on the sidelines of the ADB's annual meeting in Kyoto, western Japan.
The ADB has been helping regional economies develop bond markets by issuing local currency bonds in countries including China, the Philippines, Thailand, India and Malaysia.
"We're pretty happy with markets," Limandibrata said, adding that the ADB has been active in raising funds not just in Japan but in other countries across the globe.
"The bulk of our funding this year has been raised out of Japan, mainly through structured transactions as well as retail-targeted bonds," with increasing demand seen for ADB bonds in cash-rich oil producing nations in the Middle East, he said.
So far this year the ADB has raised more than $3 billion from over 40 transactions in various markets, compared with about $5.5 billion raised in the whole of last year, he said. The expected yuan bond issuance will follow an inaugural issuance by the ADB in 2005, when it also raised 1 billion yuan in China's domestic market.
Asian corporations and governments have long relied on foreign currency-denominated issues in international debt markets for their funding needs despite the region's high savings rate and large foreign exchange reserves.
Finance leaders of the region have been promoting steps to change this on the view that the region's heavy reliance on foreign capital was partly behind the Asian financial crisis in 1997/98.
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