Ivory Coast plans to tap international debt markets again next year, the minister in charge of finance and the economy said on Friday, after strong interest in a 10-year Eurobond issue this month allowed it to increase the amount to $750 million. Ivory Coast, the world's biggest cocoa producer and French-speaking West Africa's largest economy, sold $750 million of 10-year bonds in July after initially seeking $500 million.
"Ivory Coast envisages returning to international markets with certainty in 2015. We will assess this in 2014," said Niale Kaba, who manages the finance and economy portfolio taken over by Prime Minister Daniel Kablan Duncan in a November reshuffle. The latest bond was the West African country's first venture onto the international capital markets since a 2011 default.
The bond, which expires in 2024, has a 5.625 percent yield. The government has said it will issue around $1 billion in sovereign debt this year in a combination of dollar Eurobonds and local CFA franc-currency bonds as it rebuilds after a decade-long crisis, which ended with a short-lived civil war following elections in 2011. "We expect a growth rate of 10 percent in 2014," Kaba said. "Inflation is under control. This year inflation should be above 2.6 percent."
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