No treasury certificates for foreigners yet

The issues of treasury certificates, which could be launched by the Ministry of Finance until September will not be directly accessible to foreign investors, with specifications to be made for each particular issue, Claudiu Doltu, state secretary with the Finance Ministry, told ZF. This is in compliance with NBR”s decision not to liberalise access of non-residents to certificates maturing in less than one year until this September, although the law recently passed in Parliament does not make this distinction, giving unlimited access, regardless of the maturity. Doltu says that, anyway, “there will be very few” 6 and 12-month treasury certificate issues, therefore they could not trigger a major interest on the part of foreign investors. He says the State Treasury continues to witness excess liquidity and that under the circumstances, the Finance Ministry cannot access the market simply to build a yield curve or to set price references. “The Court of Accounts does not accept such explanations, so we can only try to revive the secondary market of T-bills,” stated Doltu. Even though they will not be able to buy treasury certificates directly until September, foreign investors will have access to auction for state bonds, organised by the Finance Ministry. The first such auction is set to take place no sooner than

April 6. ZF