Sri Lanka’s Cabinet of ministers has approved government borrowing of US $ 1.5 billion through raising funds via an International Sovereign Bond (ISB), and the requirement to issue the International Sovereign Bond was proposed by Finance Minister Mangala Samaraweera, a statement said.

The statement further added that the decision to issue the ISB takes into account current international bond market conditions as well as government borrowing limits.

This marks Sri Lanka’s fourteenth USD benchmark offering in the international bond markets since 2007 if issued and this ISB if issued will be the second ISB in this year 2019 by Sri Lanka. The first ISB for 2019 was issued on March 7th, 2019, by the Central Bank of Sri Lanka (CBSL), on behalf of the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka (Sri Lanka), successfully pricing a new issuance of US $ 1.0 billion 5-year and US $ 1.4 billion 10-year Senior Unsecured Fixed Rate Bonds (the Bonds) with maturity dates of March 14th, 2024 and March 14th, 2029, respectively. The Bonds were rated ‘B2’, ‘B’ and ‘B' by Moody's Investors Service, Standard and Poor’s and Fitch Ratings respectively. The issue totally raise US $ 2.4 billion in March 2019. It was reported that BOC International, Citigroup, Deutsche Bank, HSBC, J.P. Morgan, SMBC Nikko and Standard Chartered Bank acted as the Joint Lead Managers and Book runners on the successful transaction.

- Reporting by Devendra Francis