DMO working on issuing eurobonds, to pick advisers in open bids

The Debt Management Office (DMO) says it is working on issuing eurobonds and plans to appoint transaction advisers through an open bid process.

Patience Oniha, director-general of DMO, said this in an interview with Reuters on Wednesday.

Oniha said the amount to be raised would be within the foreign borrowing plans for 2021.

The federal government had budgeted to raise N2.34 trillion ($6.14 billion) from foreign sources.

In 2020, DMO had planned to select advisers for a $3.3 billion eurobond issue through an open competitive bid process, however, the sale was deferred due to the negative impact caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.

It planned to use last year’s eurobond sale to partly fund the 2020 budget deficit and refinance an existing $500 million eurobond due in January 2021.

However, in February 2021, the federal government reduced its external borrowings in a new debt strategy after it repaid a $500 million eurobond in January.

Oniha had said the DMO was monitoring international markets for new issues by frontier countries.

The DMO held its last eurobond sale in 2018 (its sixth sale) where it raised $2.86 billion and issued a record $10.7 billion of international bonds in the same year.

Citigroup, Standard Chartered Bank and FSDH Merchant Bank acted as financial advisers on Nigeria’s last Eurobond sale in 2018.