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IRELAND’S STANDING ON the international bond markets is almost as good as Belgium’s, meaning we should expect more and more investment.
That’s the opinion of the chief executive of the National Treasury Management Agency (NTMA) who was speaking in Dublin this evening.
John Corrigan told delegates from the Certified Public Accountants that Ireland’s debt to GDP ratio has dropped below 100 per cent, an important milestone considered key by many investors.
“This is not a million miles away from Belgium at around 84 per cent of GDP,” he said.
Belgian 10-year bonds are currently trading at a spread of around 60 basis points over Germany so an optimist could make an argument for Ireland to trade not far above that in current market conditions, given that our economic growth prospects would be generally regarded as being much stronger than those of Belgium.
Corrigan outlined what he saw as Ireland’s successful re-entry to the international debt markets and how investor perceptions of Ireland have improved as a result:
“Back in July 2011, when we weren’t borrowing, Irish 10-year yields spiked up to 14 per cent in the secondary market. In stark contrast, last Thursday’s auction we sold 10-year bonds at a yield of 2.9 per cent.”
Funding
At the end of last year the NTMA had been debating how much money it should raise on the bond markets in 2014, stating that the figure would be between €6-10 billion. The agency eventually settled on a funding target of €8 billion and Corrigan says over 70 per cent of this has been raised already.
“Last January we decided to limit the size of the new bond in order to leave capacity for bond auctions. We got off to a flying start last January when we raised €3.75 billion and followed that with two very successful auctions of €1 billion each in March and April.”
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Take that Belgium you f*ckers.
Ha!
I can’t wait to get out of this kip, maybe go to a country where good news feels good, instead of this hole where good news is nothing more than propaganda for the sheepies
I wouldn’t buy a used car off him. Everything is looking rosy, except we owe around 200 billion and are still borrowing about 9 billion a year. But if they still want to give it to us we’ll take it.
That’s not his comments or what his job is. His job is just to get the best loan rate and that’s what he’s commenting on.
So what is our debt to GDP ratio ? Irish Times today says it was 123.7 % at end 2013. Corrigan says it’s under 100% ?
It’s not his fault we owe 200BN. Remember “we all partied !!!”……..now if they get us to repeat it often enough………..
So what! Massive money printing and zero interest rates is forcing investors to invest in junk bonds like ours to get any sort of return coupled with Dragi saying he’d intervene if countries were close to default is pushing down interest rates. Greece’s bonds are also around 3.6% Ffs and they defaulted to the tune of 100bn! The fact of the matter is austerity and Keynesianism for the banks has increased debt and risk in the world economy, setting us up for a monster crash bigger than 2007! What will that mean for us? Confiscation of savings and destruction of pensions, further collapse in income and ever widening wealth and income gaps. Whupdedoo!
I think as a country we need to decide what the bottom is in terms of support. It seems we just can’t decide how far left we are trying to go. Until then people will always feel hard done by.
Hooray!!!
I don’t judge my economy on how good our bond yields are or how many new McJobs have been created. I judge it on how well the state cares for kids with special needs or how many homeless I see sleeping in doorways in Dublin’s business district every morning.
People matter more than interest on bonds.
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