Turkey Files $8 Billion Debt Prospectus With U.S. Regulator

(Bloomberg) -- Turkey filed an application in the U.S. to sell as much as $8 billion in debt, according to a prospectus posted on the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission's website

The new prospectus is a technical update to the U.S. regulator and doesn't indicate a target for sales, the Ankara-based Treasury said by email. Turkey had filed a prospectus to offer as much as $8 billion in debt securities in November, according to a previous filing on the SEC website.

The government has sold $6.25 billion of foreign currency debt in 2017, already exceeding the full-year $6 billion target. It has increased spending to bolster growth, and policy makers have said they may miss their 1.7 percent budget deficit target this year by as much as 1 percentage point. Meanwhile, analysts say domestic borrowing plans through July suggest lira debt sales will exceed redemptions this year for the first time since 2009.

So far the fiscal slippage isn't yet enough to spook the bond market, which has seen a surge in foreign demand after the central bank's efforts to stem lira declines sparked a currency rally and drove yields above 11 percent, creating one of the world's top carry-trade opportunities. The government debt-to-GDP ratio was around 30 percent at the end of 2016, about half its level a decade ago and comparing favorably with most emerging markets.

The time may be right for Turkey to borrow abroad, said Dmitri Barinov, a money manager at Union Investment Privatfonds GmbH in Frankfurt, citing calm in markets and a decrease in the cost of Turkey's credit default swaps. “The newly issued Turkey '47 is trading at highs in price, so seems like markets like the credit right now.”

Turkey's dollar bond due May 2047, issued earlier this month with a coupon of 5.75 percent, traded at 99.07 as of Friday, up from a low of 95.8 two weeks ago. The cost of insuring the nation's debt against default for five years using credit default swaps was below 200 basis points, the lowest in more than two years.

Turkey's lira was little changed against the dollar at 3.5778 per dollar as of 4:03 p.m. in Istanbul. It has recouped around 10 percent of its value against the greenback after falling to a record low in January.

To contact the reporter on this story: Constantine Courcoulas in Istanbul at ccourcoulas1@bloomberg.net.

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Ven Ram at vram1@bloomberg.net, Benjamin Harvey, Stefania Bianchi