imageMILAN: Italy's five-year borrowing costs rose on Thursday at a bond auction as investors fretting about the euro zone's prospects amid slowing global economic growth have increasingly turned to safer assets in recent weeks.

Benchmark 10-year yields however remained broadly unchanged as Italy paid 2.44 percent to sell a 2024 bond against 2.45 percent a month ago.

The bid-to-cover ratio for the sale of the 10-year bonds was 1.48 versus 1.34 then.

Italy sold a total of 7.205 billion euros over three bonds, near the top of its planned issue range of between 5.5 billion and 7.25 billion euros.

A five-year bond due in 2019 fetched an average yield of 1.23 percent versus 1.06 percent at a similar sale a month ago.

Thursday's sale was covered 1.5 times, roughly the same as a month ago.

The treasury also sold nearly 2 billion euros of a floating-rate CCTeu bond due in 2020 at an average 1.25 percent yield. Bids totalled 1.4 times tha amount sold.

Copyright Reuters, 2014

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