Dubai Electricity and Water Authority (DEWA) has no plans to tap bond markets in 2012 and the state utility will repay a 1.2 billion dirham ($326.7 million) securitisation maturity this year ahead of time, its top executive said on Thursday. "There is no bond this year," Chief Executive Saeed Mohammed al-Tayer told Reuters, adding that the utility didn't have any large maturities coming up and that those it did have would be managed using internal resources.
One such maturity, a 1.2 billion dirham securitisation, would be repaid prior to the November maturity date. "There is a payment we are supposed to pay in November and we are paying earlier ... in the third quarter of 2012," Tayer said.
If DEWA was to raise external finance, Tayer said it could be from export credit agencies - although it had no immediate plans to tap this route.
"We have a strategy consisting of (loan) syndication, sukuk, bonds, securitisation and ECA and if you look at what is the cheapest nowadays, it is the ECA," Tayer said.
"Maybe in the future we will be doing more ECAs."
DEWA completed its first ECA-backed financing - worth $1 billion with a tenor of 13 years - in May 2009 with agencies from France, Germany and Italy.
DEWA issued 7.35 billion dirhams worth of bonds in October 2010. It is the sole provider of electricity and water in the emirate of Dubai, one of seven members of the United Arab Emirates federation.