Sri Lanka sells US $ 75mn in development bonds

12 January 2016 03:01 am

Sri Lanka yesterday opened bidding for a development bond issue worth US $ 75 million, the Public Debt Department of the Central Bank said in a notice.
The tenures of the bonds were one year, one year and three months and four years and five months. 

The submission of bids for the bonds opened at 11:00 a.m. yesterday and the window would be kept open till 10:00 a.m. on January 28, 2016.

The bonds were issued at both floating and fixed interest rate arrangements and the interest rates would be paid semi-annually. 

Those who are eligible to bid for these investments are foreign citizens and entities, non-resident Sri Lankans, Sri Lankan dual citizens, authorized forex dealers, primary dealers in government securities, specified Board of Investment (BoI) companies and insurance companies.

The minimum investment is US $ 100,000 with additional investments in multiples of US $ 10,000. The gains from the bonds are exempted from income tax paid in Sri Lanka.

Meanwhile, Sri Lanka’s foreign reserves stood at US $ 7.3 billion at the end of last year, down from 8.2 billion at end-2014.

The December reserves included US $ 6,455 million in foreign reserves and US $ 760 million in gold.

Foreign reserves were boosted by the US $ 1.5 billion 10-year sovereign bond issue Sri Lanka carried out in October, last year.

Central Bank Governor Arjuna Mahendran said Sri Lanka has to settle US $ 4.3 billion in foreign loans this year, including currency swaps, which are 
rolled over.