The Polish finance ministry wants to space out the repayment of Poland's debt to the Paris Club as much as possible, so that too many issues would not have an effect on the costs of the debt, said deputy finance minister Wieslaw Szczuka. Earlier, the finance ministry had announced that Poland intended to pre-pay its EUR 12.3bn Paris Club debt in 2005 and the operation would be financed by issues of bonds on foreign markets within the next 12-18 months.
Last week, finance minister Miroslaw Gronicki said that the ministry would sell EUR 1.0-1.5bn worth of eurobonds on Jan 10 or 11. On Friday, Szczuka said, however, that there was no hurry with the issues as the ministry already had a significant part of the funds necessary for the repayment. He said that the ministry had, among others, a revolving credit available, which it had used earlier.
Szczuka added that in his opinion repayment to the Paris Club debt would improve Poland's image, and
help to raise the country's ratings. At present, agencies rate Poland's currency exchange commitments
at “BBB” (Standard & Poor’s), “BBB+” (Fitch), while its sovereign rating is “A2” (Moody’s).