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May 24, 2019 www.intellinews.com I Page 28
bne:Credit Ukraine repays $1bn
in US-guaranteed Eurobonds
Ukraine’s finance ministry redeemed the $1bn issue of US- guaranteed bonds issued in 2014 at 1.844% on May 16, according to the nation's finance ministry.
Evgeniya Akhtyrko at Kyiv-based brokerage Concorde Capital wrote n a note on May 20 that this is one of Ukraine's several major repayments on foreign debt in 2019. "As we estimated earlier, this expenditure will result in gross international reserves depleting by around 5% in May," she added.
Given the negative current account balance and weak FDI inflow, this loss in not likely to be replenished without receiving a new tranche loan under the Stand-By Arrangement agreed by Kyiv with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in 2018, Akhtyrko believes.
In June-December 2019, Ukraine is to repay around $900mn to the IMF. In addition, it is to redeem $700mn in Eurobonds in September.
Defying warnings of an imminent slowdown in the Central, Eastern and Southeast Europe (CESEE) region, Hungary and Romania posted strong growth of over 5% for the first quarter of 2019. However,
says a report from the Vienna Institute for International Economic Studies (wiiw), the ongoing booms in the two countries are based on temporary factors and are not expected to last.
“In Hungary and Romania ... temporary factors are making a big con- tribution to current particularly strong momentum. We do not expect this to last indefinitely. In the case of Hungary, we see a particularly strong and front-loaded drawdown of EU funds. For Romania, loose policy has its limits,” says the report published on May 15.
Dozens of Kazakh homeowners, mostly women, demanded debt forgiveness and financial support for low income families, single mothers and people with problematic mortgages at rally in front of the ruling Nur Otan party’s headquarters in Almaty on May 21.
The rally took place ahead of the upcoming June 9 snap election and reflects both the state of many Kazakh households as well as the state of the ailing Kazakh banking sector, which has been subject to many bailouts due a high concentration of non-performing loans.
The demonstrators argued that inflation has harmed low-income families that took out mortgages in 2004-2009 before the global financial crisis.
Booms in Hungary and Romania not expected to last
Kazakhs rally for mortgage debt forgiveness