20 April 2004 09:02
MOSCOW BUYS 852.3 MLN RUBLES IN SERIES-30 BONDS
MOSCOW. April 20 (Interfax) - The Moscow State Debt Committee on Tuesday bought 852.3 million rubles in series-30
Moscow City bonds, which mature on November 13 2004, on the secondary market Tuesday and saved the budget about 20
million rubles in coupon payments.
Series-30 was reduced to 3.15 billion rubles from 4 billion rubles, Alexander Kovalenko, the committee's
chairman, told Interfax.
"We used temporarily available funds and we would have had to redeem [the issue] at the end of the year
anyway," he said.
The bonds were issued on August 13 2003 with 15-month terms and coupon yield of 10% annually, which is paid
quarterly.
The committee bought the bonds at the secondary market price in several transactions with minimum yield of 4.5% and
maximum yield of 4.87%. About a third of the bonds purchased had yield of 4.5%.
Moscow is due to redeem series-three savings bonds totaling 1
billion rubles in August. "The price [for these bonds] is high, the
"We bought 2 million more bonds than planned: the city finance department allocated funds for the purchase of
850,000 bonds, but the price was lower and is going down on the market," Kovalenko said.
Asked about further plans of this kind, Kovalenko said regions were rather restricted by budget legislation. "If
we do any transactions with instruments for next year, a budget decision will be required because the situation will
arise where budget revenue this year is used for next year's spending," he said.
Thus, the committee can only concentrate on instruments that mature in the current financial year.
advantage of operations is weak so we will probably not redeem the bonds [ahead of schedule], but we will for
series-30 bonds if the market allows," Kovalenko said.
[Interfax] |
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