The government plans to tap again the international bond market in the next 12 or 18 months, Finance Secretary Carlos Dominguez III said Tuesday.
“As I mentioned to the Treasury… I told them that I don’t want to be absent from any major market. The renminbi is the first issue we had… we probably will go back within 12 or 18 months… the same with Japan,” Dominguez said at the sidelines of the second economic forum of the Economic Journalists’ Association of the Philippines held in Intramuros, Manila.
“We learned that it is very difficult to get back into a market if you are absent for like eight years… We were not in the Japanese bond market for eight years and it was a little difficult,” he said.
Dominguez said doing one issue every year or every 18 months should be good for the government. He did did not specify the amount of the next issue.
The government early this month returned to the Samurai bond market for the first time in eight years with the issuance of a multi-tranche JPY154.2 billion ($1.39 billion) Samurai bonds.