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December 14, 2018 www.intellinews.com I Page 31
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Turkey’s sovereign wealth fund reportedly planning to borrow $1bn from international investors
Investors cautious of Russia's OFZ bonds ahead of CBR meeting
Turkey’s sovereign wealth fund plans to borrow $1bn from international lenders early next year, three people with knowledge
of the plan told Bloomberg on December 12. The Turkey Wealth
Fund (TWF) is to announce a syndicated loan that will have a maturity of two years with an option to extend another year, they added.
Reportedly, according to one cited source, TWF plans to inject the borrowed cash into companies in its portfolio. That includes some of the country’s largest companies such as Turkish Airlines, Turk Telekom and lenders Ziraat and Halkbank. On December 12, the country’s postal service, PTT, was transferred to the fund.
In September, it was announced that President Recep Tayyip Erdogan had ousted the entire management staff of the sovereign wealth fund and appointed himself chairman.
Russia's finance ministry placed only RUB13.6bn out of a proposed RUB21.2bn ($319mn) in a weekly OFZ federal bonds auction on December 12.
At the previous auction the finance ministry surprised the market by placing RUB25bn worth of OFZs, but the demand for the bonds declined due to the uncertainty over the CBR meeting on December 14, inflationary expectations, and a possible rate hike.
Analysts surveyed by Vedomosti daily also believe that high supply of bonds from the finance ministry in December could weight in on the market. Nevertheless, the finance ministry seems to remain confident in OFZ potential.
The Czech government approved the joint recommendation of the Ministry of Finance and the Czech National Bank not to set a tar- get date for the country to join the Eurozone yet at its session on December 12. According to the ministry and the central bank, the country has not yet made sufficient progress for the adoption of the euro.
“We definitely do not want to risk a major depreciation of savings of our citizens. Moreover, recently, Eurozone rules have changed sig- nificantly and it is difficult to estimate what obligations the Czech Republic would have to follow after its entry,” the finance minister said on twitter.
Czech finance ministry and central bank recommend keeping out of Eurozone