15.01.2015

The Ministry of Finance has ordered the payment of USD 1,131,162,978.75 to the holders of the Global Bonds of the Republic of Bulgaria maturing on 15 January 2015. The sum comprises of USD 1,086,351,000.00 principal and the last payable interest coupon of USD 44,811,978.75. The value date of the payment is 14.01.2014 and the BNB exchange rate for 14.01.2014 - USD/BGN - 1.661.

The Global Bonds were issued in two tranches: on 10.04.2002 - USD 511,498,000 at BNB exchange rate for 09.04.2002 - USD/BGN - 2.23192 and on 09.10.2002 - USD 759,053,000 at BNB exchange rate for 08.10.2002 - USD/BGN - 1.99574. The principal paid amounts to USD 1,086,351,000.00 because in the period November-December 2008 operations for buy-back of part of the Bonds were performed.

The funds for repayment of the maturing issue have been raised during the successfully placed on the international financial markets 10-year Euro Bond with coupon of 2.95%, which is by 5.30 percentage points lower than the coupon of the Bond issue with maturity 15.01.2015. Thus around BGN 95.6 million interest expenses per year will be saved for the state budget and the negative impact of the US Dollar currency risk will be minimised.  

After the payment Bulgaria's government debt will be reduced by around EUR 919.6 from almost EUR 11.4 billion to EUR 10.5 billion. This represents drop in the debt to GDP ratio of more than 2 p.p., thus as a result of the repayment the ratio is reduced from 27.0% to 24.8%, and the relative share of the government debt in US Dollars will drop to 0.5% of the total debt.