Nigeria, which had hoped to issue a Eurobond this year, has decided to delay it and sell a debut dollar bond on the domestic market as it seeks to fund its budget deficit and shore up the battered naira.
Finance Minister Wale Edun told an investor conference in Lagos, the commercial capital, on Thursday that the five-year, $500 million bond will be issued on Aug. 19.
He said market conditions had not been ripe to proceed with the Eurobond, so the government will instead target Nigerians at home as well as the significant number who live abroad.
“Interest rates are coming down but they are still elevated and our access to those markets are very strongly affected by the way the rating agencies rate developing countries,” Edun said. “The only answer to that is to rely on your own recourses to raise funds domestically.”
African nations were priced out of international capital markets after global interest rates rose sharply in 2022 in response to mounting inflation, but several have returned this year including Ivory Coast, Benin, Senegal, Kenya and Cameroon.
Nigeria’s issue will be priced at a yield similar to its 2029 Eurobonds, said Gbadebo Adenrele, managing director for investment banking at lead arranger United Capital Plc. The 2029s were quoted at 10.23% at 3:25 p.m. in London.
Africa’s most-populous nation faces a significant revenue shortfall because of oil production that falls short of capacity and a very narrow tax base.
The government approved a 28.8 trillion naira ($18.1 billion) spending plan for 2024, with a deficit of 9.8 trillion naira, which it aims to finance from domestic and international borrowing.
The naira has also taken strain. It was deliberately devalued against the dollar last year, when President Bola Tinubu relaxed currency rules and allowed it to float, and is still under pressure due to dollar scarcity in the local foreign exchange market.
Nigeria has not given up on tapping the Eurobond market, Edun said, but it will wait for more attractive conditions.
“We have access to it and we will access that market as need be,” Edun said. “By the time we have got all we can from our own people, our own citizens on fair and competitive terms, then we can look to outsiders.”
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Source: bloomberg
