The Finance ministry announced that Poland would prepay the debt currently owed to the Paris Club creditors in 2005. The debt, inherited from 1970’s, amounts to approximately EUR 12.3bn and matures between 2005 and 2009.
The finance ministry said that the exact amount to be prepaid and the timing had not been decided yet as the decision of each of the 16 creditor countries whether to participate in the transaction is pending. In
recent years, Poland prepaid USD 6.6bn of its Brady bonds (issued in 1994 under the London Club
agreement), all of its USD 3.3bn debt to Brazil and about one-third of the debt to the World Bank
(equivalent to EUR 0.6bn).
Those transactions led to a decrease in the volume of Poland’s outstanding debt, lower debt servicing costs and more comfortable timing of future principal repayments.
Eurobond sale on Jan 10-11
The Finance ministry will sell EUR1.0-1.5bn worth of eurobonds on Monday or Tuesday, finance minister Miroslaw Gronicki said. Earlier, Gronicki had announced that an issue worth EUR 1.5bn would be carried out in January.
In 2004, the finance ministry placed, amongst others, eurobonds worth EUR 700mn as well as bonds on the Swiss and Japanese markets. The 2005 budget bill stipulates that credit needs will reach PLN 46.50bn as against PLN 52.4bn in 2004. Domestic financing is to reach PLN 43.14bn,and foreign financing – PLN 3.55bn (as against PLN 3.20bn in 2004).