The financing need of the State budget of Côte d'Ivoire for 2020 stands at 1494.4 billion FCFA, up 174 billion FCFA compared to 2019, said Tuesday in Abidjan the director of public debt and donations, Jules Coulibaly, on the occasion of a ceremony of first listing of TPCI bonds 5,755 2019-2026 (O.35 and O.36) on the premises of the Regional Stock Exchange (BRVM).

"The financing need of the State budget of Côte d'Ivoire for 2020 is 1,494.4 billion CFA francs, up 174 billion CFA francs compared to 2019," coulibaly said, stressing that the issuance schedule, already finalized, should be made available to the market in the coming days.

In 2019, the Ivorian State carried out a total of 19 fundraising operations in general on the regional market, with in particular seven public offering operations.

"We have gone from a frequency of two operations per year until 2016 to now more than five operations per year," he explained, reassuring that "the State of Côte d'Ivoire continues to manage its debt in a prudent manner by elaborating each year, a Medium-Term Debt Management Strategy (MTDS)"

To meet the financing need of the State budget "we have resorted to international markets, through very long-term issues to the tune of 500 billion CFA francs" and "solicited the regional market by issuing domestic debt for 820 billion CFA francs", said Mr. Jules Coulibaly.

These two bond instruments, listed today, in particular the July TPCI loan for an amount of CFAF 60 billion over seven years and that for August, also worth CFAF 50 billion over seven years, are part of a financing strategy of the public debt department on the regional market, he said.

The two operations were notably subscribed with amounts of 116 billion CFA francs and 79 billion CFA francs respectively, which made it possible to contribute to the achievement of the objectives of mobilizing resources from the Ivorian State budget during 2019.

The State of Côte d'Ivoire, which records a significant public debt service, has committed itself in recent years through the implementation of several securities buyback operations both on the regional market and on the Eurobond market.

This is to reduce refinancing peaks and extend the average maturity of the debt portfolio while improving debt sustainability ratios. In 2019, the Ivorian State carried out two share buyback operations on the regional market for a total amount of 282 billion CFA francs.

"At the international level, we have carried out a management operation of our Eurobonds liabilities for a total amount of EUR 1.371 billion, or about 900 billion CFA francs," noted the director of Ivorian public debt, Mr. Jules Coulibaly.

In order to protect the country's debt portfolio against currency risk, Côte d'Ivoire has set up a currency hedging to set the debt service in foreign currencies over the coming years. An operation that involved a notional of 724 million UDS, or 474 billion FCFA.