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Belarus may issue bonds worth $1.35bn in Russia in 2021-23

  • The bonds, with a maturity of at least three years, may be placed in Russia in 2021-2023 to help Belarus to refinance its foreign debt, the decree said.
  • Belarus, which has been rocked by protests since last year's contested elections, has to cover more than $3 billion of its foreign debt this year.
Published May 15, 2021

MOSCOW: Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko has approved a bond issue in Russian roubles worth up to 100 billion roubles ($1.4 billion), a government decree, published in a state database of legal documents, showed.

The bonds, with a maturity of at least three years, may be placed in Russia in 2021-2023 to help Belarus to refinance its foreign debt, the decree said.

Belarus, which has been rocked by protests since last year's contested elections, has to cover more than $3 billion of its foreign debt this year.

The authorities said previously they planned to borrow around $1 billion inside and outside the country this year to partly refinance the debt.

After placing euro-denominated bonds worth $1.25 billion last summer, Minsk lost access to western currency markets due to sanctions, imposed by the European Union and the United States. The US and EU want the government to stop the crackdown on its critics and to arrange talks with the opposition.

Belarus placed rouble-denominated bonds worth 30 billion roubles at the Moscow Exchange in 2019-2020.

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