Borrowing $3bn via sovereign bonds doesn’t affect Vietnam’s national debt: official

Vietnam’s intention to raise US$3 billion worth of sovereign bonds overseas in two years is meant to restructure short-term debt locally, not affecting the total national debt, a senior official of the Ministry of Finance said at a recent press meeting in Hanoi

Minister of Finance Dinh Tien Dung sought the approval from the law-making National Assembly on October 12 to issue $3 billion in sovereign bonds in 2017.

The proposal of the government on the future sovereign bonds issuance, if approved by the National Assembly, will only be launched on the basis of causing no change in the national debt, Deputy Minister of Finance Do Hoang Anh Tuan said during the press meeting on Monday.

The proposed issuance of the bonds to international financial markets is to restructure the domestic short-term debt via long-term foreign loans, Deputy Minister Tuan said.

As a result, the total debt of Vietnam will not change, and the only changes are to new creditors and interest rates, he added.

The preparation of the bond issuance is feasible, and based on the principle of demand, the official said.

The $3 billion is the ceiling rate for restructuring debt in the 2015-16 period, Deputy Minister Tuan said.

Vietnam’s tax collection for the national state budget this year may exceed original estimates by VND17.4 trillion ($783 million), he said.

The main reasons, according to the official, was the fact that GDP growth is expected to reach 6.5 percent, and the number of firms which are able to pay corporate income tax has increased, accounting for 39-42 percent of the total now compared to just over 30 percent in previous years, Tuan said.

However, the state budget will run a VND31 trillion ($1.4 billion) deficit this year for two basic reasons, the deputy minister said.

Firstly, the price of crude oil was only $54-55 per barrel, sharply down from the estimate of $100 per barrel.

Secondly, Vietnam had to adjust the import duties on some products such as fuel oil and diesel to 0 percent and five percent, respectively, in adherence to the regional economic integration roadmap.

In November 2014, Vietnam sold $1 billion worth of sovereign bonds with a ten-year maturity term and a yield of 4.8 percent – the first in nearly five years and the third in its history – in the U.S., according to the Ministry of Finance.

Vietnam’s public debts are projected to make up 62.3 percent of the country’s gross domestic product by the end of this year, still within the permitted debt ceiling of 65 percent, Truong Hung Long, head of the Department of Debt Management and External Finance under the finance ministry, said at a conference in Hanoi last month.

Vietnam’s GDP in 2015 is expected to surpass the $200 billion mark to reach over $204 billion from over $186 billion last year, according to the finance ministry.

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Borrowing $3bn via sovereign bonds doesn’t affect Vietnam’s national debt: official

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