Debt agreement between Bulgaria and global banks grows to €27 billion

Bulgaria's medium-term global debt issuance program on international capital markets is increasing to 27 billion euros (nearly 53 billion leva), according to a document uploaded to the website of the Luxembourg Stock Exchange, where Bulgarian foreign debt is traded.

The agreement on the Global Medium Term Note Programme involves Citigroup, JP Morgan, UniCredit, BNP Paribas, HSBC, Societe Generale Corporate & Investment Banking. Under the agreement, these financial institutions will manage the country's future medium-term note emissions when the government decides to place them on international markets.

The amount under this agreement is renewed regularly. The agreement was first signed in 2015, during the second government of Boyko Borissov, with Finance Minister Vladislav Goranov. At that time, the partner banks were Citigroup, HSBC Bank Plc, Societe Generale and UniCredit Bank.

The first limit of the program was 8 billion euros of external debt, to be emitted within three years. A report by Economic.bg shows that since then the program has been updated several times. In 2024, the ceiling was set at 20 billion euros.

The Ministry of Finance clarified to Economic.bg that such updates are made by the National Assembly when it adopts the state budget for the respective year.

In 2024, the caretaker government of Dimitar Glavchev, with Finance Minister Lyudmila Petkova, issued three bond emissions - two euro-denominated and one US dollar-denominated - for a total value of 8.5 billion leva. They were also part of the Medium-Term Global Debt Issuance Program.

The 2025 State Budget Act states that this year, Bulgaria can withdraw a total of up to 9.5 billion euros of new debt. So far, 900 million euros have been withdrawn from the domestic debt market. According to unofficial information, on April 28, the Ministry of Finance turned to the foreign markets, placing two bond emissions for a total of 4 billion euros. One is a 9-year bond worth 2.25 billion euros, and the other is a 13-year bond for 1.75 billion euros.

Translated by Tzvetozar Vincent Iolov