ADB, others mulling rupee bond sales overseas: Mayaram

IFC sold the first rupee-denominated bond this month

Asian Development Bank and other multilateral entities are considering issuing rupee-denominated bonds in markets overseas, said Economic Affairs Secretary Arvind Mayaram on Thursday.

Any such issuance would come after International Finance Corp, a unit of World Bank, sold the first rupee-denominated bond from an international agency this month, raising Rs 1,000 crore by pricing its 3-year rupee-denominated bonds at 7.75%.

The sale drew orders of just over Rs 2,000 crore, according to a report from International Financing Review, a Thomson Reuters publication.

"They are now recalibrating. They believe they might be able to issue at a much lower coupon than they did," Mayaram said in a speech at an event in Mumbai.

"There are other entities like the Asian Development Bank which are also wanting to go the international market for rupee bonds and from within the country, IDFC is already ready to launch a rupee bond abroad," he added.

Government has been keen to internationalise the rupee, and has also been preparing to lobby major trading partners to accept rupee payments for some of heir exports.

"We have seen this tentative opening up in terms of reachout to the global market. which will also benchmark in some way, globally, the bonds that we have," Mayaram said.

ADB is considering issuing rupee-linked bonds but any such plans are still at an early stage, the bank's deputy treasurer Kazuki Fukunaga was quoted as saying in an emailed statement earlier in the day.

"ADB has considered the possibility of issuing rupee-linked bonds as part of its ongoing efforts to support operations and bond market development in India. However, we are still at the very early stages of this and we have not yet taken any firm decisions," Fukunaga said.

IFC and IDFC Ltd were not immediately reachable.