Global investors welcomed Argentina back to international credit markets, with demand for $60 billion of bonds far outstripping supply in the country's first debt auction since a 2001 default, the government said Tuesday.
Latin America's third-biggest economy ended its financial isolation by borrowing cash on world credit markets for the first time in 15 years.
Investors offered to buy more than $60 billion of government bonds, Finance Minister Alfonso Prat-Gay said.
That was "the highest demand in history in an emerging economy and among the 20 biggest debt issues in history," he told a news conference.
The demand was several times the supply in the bond auction, which was initially forecast to raise between $12.5 billion and $15.0 billion.
The country is looking to boost its struggling economy and settle a 15-year lawsuit by US investment funds that its ex-president Cristina Kirchner branded as "vultures."
A source close to the operation earlier said that Argentina would pay interest rates of between 6.25 and eight percent on the bonds.
Prat-Gay said the government would give details of the volume and rates of the bonds sold at around 1800 GMT on Tuesday after markets close.
"We are very happy to have come so quickly out of the darkness to be able to reconnect with the world," he said.
The money borrowed by issuing the bonds would give the government financial leeway even after it has paid off the so-called "holdouts," international funds that sued it in the US courts for full repayment.
Maturities on the various bond tranches are for three, five, 10 and 30 years.
It is the biggest Argentine cash call on markets in two decades.
Argentina's new conservative president Mauricio Macri has claimed the return to the international financial fold as a victory.
His opponents said poor families would bear the cost of his borrowing since public spending cuts would be imposed to pay off the debts eventually.
Macri has been scrapping Kirchner's protectionist policies and opening up Argentina's diplomatic and financial ties.
He has removed currency controls and raised utility prices, triggering angry protests from Argentines who say their spending power is declining.
The bond sale "is a major step forward," Agustin Carstens, head of the IMF's Monetary and Financial Committee, said Saturday.
"It is very good to have a country as important as Argentina putting the house in order."
He warned, however, that Argentines would have to endure tough economic cutbacks to stabilise the economy and public finances.
"Needless to say, in the short term, some measures may be difficult to digest," Carstens said in Washington.
The International Monetary Fund forecasts that Argentina's economy will contract by one percent this year and grow 2.8 percent in 2017.
Prat-Gay has given a stronger forecast of around zero growth this year and growth of up to four percent next year.
After the 2001 crisis, some Argentines object to taking on new debt - not least Kirchner and her allies.
"Once again history is repeating itself and catching the Argentines out. Debt, devaluation, layoffs, political persecution, price rises," Kirchner said in a speech last week.
"These are just a few of the calamities that the new government has caused in barely four months."
Macri on Saturday announced a series of social welfare measures that he said would help the poor cope with the cuts.
The finance ministry said it had enlisted Deutsche Bank, HSBC, J. P Morgan, Santander, BBVA, Citigroup and UBS to organise the bond sale.
It has included a clause to prevent a small number of shareholders from blocking the restructuring of the debt.
That is a measure to avoid a repeat of Argentina's fight with the "holdouts."
Credit rater Moody's raised Argentina's sovereign rating on Friday ahead of the bond sale.
It still ranks as a speculative investment with a "high credit risk," but less high-risk than before.