Romania’s government launched on January 14 two Eurobonds issues with a maturity of 10 years and 30 years, Mediafax news agency announced. The size of each of the two issues was USD 1bn. BNP Paribas, Citigroup and JP Morgan were the lead managers of the issues.

This is the first time Romania has issued Eurobonds with a 30 year maturity. Even if the country had to pay a premium to issue the bond, it was worth doing as it opens the door to Romanian companies wanting to enter the US debt market, central bank vice governor Cristian Popa said at the Euromoney Central & Eastern European Forum  in Vienna. Romania plans to maintain the currency structure of the public debt by re-financing maturing issues with ones of similar currency, Treasury head Enache Jiru said.

The yields were lower than the indicative levels set before the issue, the sources said. Specifically, the indicative yield for the 10-year Eurobond was set at 237.5bps over the benchmark level of the US Treasury securities with the same maturity, while the indicative spread for the 30-year maturity Eurobond was set at 270bps. Eventually, the spread for the 30-year maturity was 245bps meaning that the yield itself was 6.23%, Mediafax said quoting Reuters. The spread for the 10-year maturity was 215bps and the yield was 5%.

Last November, Romania’s government lifted the target size of the medium term notes (MTN) programme started in 2010 from EUR 8bn to EUR 15bn and extended its deadline from end-2013 to end-2016. The MTN programme was thus supplemented with EUR 7bn to be issued over 2014-2016. For this year, Romania plans issues of EUR 2bn, the government said.  The goevernment added that should market conditions be favourable further issues could be launched in order to pre-finance next years' public deficits.