Poland is targeting investors in Asia with its first sale of bonds in US dollars since July to help plug its budget deficit, deputy Finance minister Dominik Radziwill said.
The government plans to sell about $1 billion of bonds due in five years because that was the maturity "preferred" by investors in Asia, Radziwill said in an interview. The sale probably will be next month and follows investor meetings last week in China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, India, Singapore, Korea and Australia, he said.
"The presence of Asia investors in our bond sales has been low," Radziwill said. "That's where the growth is right now, reserves are rising so it would be good if their share in the Polish bond market increased."
Poland, the only European Union economy to avoid a recession through the credit crisis, is luring international investors, with foreign holdings of domestic government bonds reaching the highest level since at least 2004, according to the finance ministry's Web site. While Greece's budget gap of 12.7 percent of gross domestic product is driving away money managers, Poland's pledge to narrow its deficit to 2.9 percent of GDP in 2012 has helped cut yields to a seven-month low.
"There is a lot of interest in Poland, despite negative signals coming from the European Union related to Greece," said Radziwill. "Economic growth in Poland even compared to Far East Asian countries is high."
Fastest Pace
Eastern Europe's largest economy grew an annual 3.1 percent last quarter, the fastest pace in a year, and is likely to maintain 3 percent expansion through 2010, according to the government. That compares with 2 percent growth for the central and eastern European region, according to International Monetary Fund forecasts for 2010. China's economy is poised to expand 10 percent and India's 7.7 percent, the IMF says.
Poland's budget deficit increased to 6.4 percent last year from 3.6 percent in 2008, according to European Commission estimates. The government is targeting a deficit of 6.9 percent this year and seeking to quadruple revenue from selling state assets to provide a record $10 billion toward funding the gap.
Poland will seek to sell bonds in yen and Swiss francs this year and is talking with banks about selling debt directly to investors in a private placement as it is looks for "cheap forms of financing," Radziwill said. The government may offer so-called Schuldschein loans in Germany, he said.
"We're loading up and will be ready to fire away when market conditions are right," he said. "We will definitely be back in the foreign markets in the first half of the year."
China Reserves
Officials met with investors in Asia to "promote and inform" them about the country's local and international bonds, the finance ministry wrote in an e-mailed response to Bloomberg last week. Nomura Holdings Inc. organised the meetings. The country is likely to register the bonds with the US Securities and Exchange Commission "in several weeks," Radziwill said.
The government may have more success selling the bonds to state institutions than fund managers in Asia, according to Wee- Ming Ting, head of Asian bonds in Singapore for Pictet Asset Management, which oversees $7 billion of emerging-market debt.
"Official institutions may have some interest because it is sovereign risk, they are more comfortable with sovereign risk," Ting said. "For the rest of the industry, they'll have less interest. It's a distance away from Asia, there's less familiarity with it."
China's foreign exchange reserves, the world's largest at about $2.4 trillion, climbed 23 percent last year, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. South Korea increased reserves in 2009 by 34 percent to about $270 billion, the data show.
Lower Spread
The yield on Poland's dollar bonds is 1.47 percentage points higher than US Treasuries, a lower premium than the 2.36 percentage points spread on Indonesia's notes and 2.44 percentage points for the Philippines, according to JPMorgan Chase & Co. indexes. Poland's debt is rated A-, the seventh- highest investment grade ranking, with a stable outlook, at Standard & Poor's. Indonesia and the Philippines are rated BB-, six levels lower at non-investment grade.
"In terms of spread, it isn't offering as much compared to Indonesia or the Philippines," said Ting.
Poland raised $3.5 billion in its last sale of bonds in dollars last July. The yield on the securities maturing in 2019 has fallen to 5.02 percent from 6.19 percent at the time of issue, according to Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc prices. The government raised 3 billion euros ($4.08 billion) in January, meeting half of the 6 billion euros of foreign bond sales planned for this year.
Leaving euro
Yields on five-year zloty-denominated bonds have dropped 48 basis points in the past two months to 5.49 percent, the lowest since August, according to Bloomberg data. Holdings of the domestic bonds by international investors increased 47 percent in the past year to 85.6 billion zloty, the highest level since at least 2004, according to data available on the finance ministry's Web site. The zloty strengthened 20.3 percent against the euro in the past 12 months, the second-best performer in the Europe, Middle East and Africa region after the rand.
"I assume these are investors who are leaving the euro zone periphery and putting their money here," Radziwill said. "We are not being linked in any fundamental way with the fiscal problems of Greece or southern Europe because of a relatively low deficit and public debt. We also have economic growth and that clearly sets us apart."
Poland is "inclined" to seek an extension to its $20.6 billion flexible credit line granted by the IMF last May and will discuss the matter with a mission from the Washington-based institution visiting Warsaw next week, Radziwill said.
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601083&sid=a3AfWMR931SU
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