Hungary to issue Eurobond in January or February

Budapest, January 7 (MTI) – Hungary will issue a Eurobond in either dollars or euros in January or February, Economy Minister Mihaly Varga said in an interview with Bloomberg published on Thursday.

“The custom in central and eastern Europe is to finance ourselves as rapidly as possible early in the year so there’s peace and quiet afterwards,” Varga said in the interview, conducted on Wednesday.

“Because of maturities we obviously need to make a market move in January or February,” he told Bloomberg without elaborating on the size or maturity.

Varga said in December that Hungary could issue a yuan-denominated bond up to 3 billion yuan (EUR 420m) in 2016.

Prime Minister Viktor Orban and Bank of China Chairman Tian Guoli signed a cooperation agreement on issuing yuan-denominated Hungarian government bonds during an official visit by the prime minister to Beijing last November.

Hungary plans to issue the equivalent of 1 billion euros in foreign-currency bonds on international markets this year, according to an outlook released by the Government Debt Management Agency (AKK) in December. Hungary has between 5 billion and 5.5 billion euros of foreign-currency debt coming due this year.

Varga told Bloomberg that the government could re-privatise MKB Bank by listing the lender on the stock exchange.

“One scenario in the case of the privatisation of MKB Bank is also to do it via the stock exchange,” he said.

“We can’t exclude the option of putting our stake in Budapest Bank on the market along with the sale of MKB,” he added, without offering further details.

The state of Hungary acquired Budapest Bank from GE last year and MKB Bank from BayernLB in 2014.

Source: http://mtva.hu/hu/hungary-matters