Sri Lanka 10-year sovereign bond gets orders over USD2.5 bn: report

Oct 27, 2015 (LBO) - Sri Lanka has opened a 10-year sovereign bond issue to international investors with a price guidance of 6.85 percent to raise at least 500 million dollars, media reports said. The initial price guidance of 7 percent was lowered with order books exceeding 2.5 billion dollars. In a statement on Tuesday Standard & Poor's assigned a 'B+' rating to the bond adding the size of the issue had not been decided, a Reuters report said. Rated B1/B+/BB- by Moody's, S&P and Fitch respectively, Sri Lanka has mandated Citigroup, Deutsche Bank, HSBC and Standard Chartered for the offering of US dollar bonds. The issue will be priced later on Tuesday. In May, Sri Lanka raised 650 million dollars via a 10-year sovereign bond at 6.125 percent per annum yield. Sri Lanka's budget deficit is expected to increase to 6.8 percent of GDP this year, while foreign reserves dropped to 6.8 billion dollars in September, a shortfall this bond issue is expected to fill.