Romania has hired Citigroup, Societe Generale, UniCredit and ING to intermediate a Eurobond denominated in euro with a planned 10-year maturity to be launched within two weeks, unofficial sources told news agency Mediafax.

There is a window of opportunity for the country on the foreign capital market - the sources commented.

Romania has launched two Eurobonds earlier in January, when it drained USD 2bn in two issues of USD 1bn each with maturities of 10 years and 30 years. The yields were lower than envisaged by the government – but debatably low in absolute terms.

In particular, 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%.

Earlier - in October 2013, Romania re-opened a Eurobond initially launched in September and drained another EUR 500mn at a yield of 4.15%. The yield decreased by 70bps from September. The note with a 4.625% coupon was bid at a cash price of 106.53 resulting in a 3.47% yield, on Friday, April 4, according to Reuters quoting Tradeweb data.

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 alone, Romania plans issues of EUR 2bn, the government has said, adding however that in case the market conditions are favourable more issues could be launched in order to pre-finance next years' public deficits.