Finance Ministry needs less money than before

Finance Ministry needs about 6,200bn ROL (some $187 million) in June to fund the budget deficit and refinance the public debt, approximately 4,000bn ROL less than it needed in May. The government securities issuance schedule remains unchanged: six T-bills issues maturing in up to one year inclusive, two bond issues bearing a fixed interest and due in two and three years respectively and a bond issue bearing a floating interest indexed in line with the inflation. The interests asked by banks and those the Finance Ministry is willing to pay to borrow are still not “meeting”, not even for the two-year maturity, so that the only uninterrupted yield curves are those for the maturities of up to one year. The one-year interest kept almost constant in the first four months of 2004, with very small fluctuations between 17.9%-18%. The growth is, however, obvious if looking at mid 2003, when the interest was as low as 15.5%. ZF