24.03.2014

The Ministry of Finance has offered successfully 2.5-year government securities (GS) with nominal value of BGN 50 million maturing on 26 September 2016. A weighted average annual yield of 1.07 per cent was reached at the auction held on 24 March 2014. This has been the lowest value in this segment since 2012. The auction's bid-to-cover ratio reached 4.73 and has been the highest one since the start of 2013, corresponding to offers of BGN 236.55 million for the amount of GS offered. The spread to the German Bunds in this maturity segment is 87 basis points.

The bidders showed great interest in both the quantity offered for competitive sale and in the non-competition part allocated among the investors. The biggest amount of GS was acquired by banks - 38.00%, followed by pension funds - 37.18% and guarantee and contractual funds - 24.82 per cent.

The yield achieved is lower than that of the BGN-denominated bonds with similar maturity of a number of EU members and countries from the region: Lithuania (1.11%), Italy (1.11%), Portugal (1.32%), Croatia (2.40%), Poland (2.99%), Hungary (3.63%), Romania (3.63%), Cyprus (5.65%) and Turkey (11.17%).