El Salvador’s offer to buy back its bonds worth about $7.2 billion closed on Thursday.
El Salvador’s president, Nayib Bukele, announced on Friday night that the country repurchased for just over $940 million of its sovereign debt with maturity between 2027 and 2052.
El Salvador’s offer to buy back its bonds worth about $7.2 billion closed on Thursday.
“We have just accepted debt repurchase offers for a total of US$940,441,670,83,” the president said in a message on his account on the X social network.
As the government had indicated, the offer of repurchase was in force until October 10 and the liquidation of validly tendered and accepted bonds is scheduled for October 16, 2024, said an information note on the repurchase published by Bukele.
The Salvadoran government said on October 4, when launching the offer of repurchase, that the country’s sovereign debt matured between 2027 and 2052 amounted to $7.2 billion.
The bonds that were not repurchased will be returned to the holders, but it is not specified who they are, according to the government’s information note.
According to the Bukele government, the repurchase of its sovereign debt is made with the aim of managing its external public debt (…) and promoting certain conservation and economic sustainability efforts in El Salvador.
According to official data until last June, the country accumulated a public debt of $30 billion, 84% of GDP.
According to an official statement, the settlement of validly tendered and accepted bonds is scheduled for October 16 or earlier and indicates that “the total purchase price plus the accrued interest to be paid by the Republic is expected to be $940,441,670.83.”
According to an official statement shared on October 5, this is nine amounts that total a debt of more than $7,199 million, which have interest rates between 6 % and 9 % interest.
The main amounts that the Government seeks to repurchase are 633 million (2027), 529.5 million, 1 billion (2030), 286.4 million, 1 billion (2035), 653,5 million (2041), 1,097 million (2050), 1 billion (2052) and 1 billion “nots of interest only.”
At the end of 2023, El Salvador ' s total public debt reached $20,097.64 million, of which $12,088.61 million is foreign debt. These accounts do not include pension debt, which reached $10,231.93 million.
In mid-April, the Government of El Salvador accepted the advance purchase of its bonds due between 2025 and 2029 for $469.9 million.
El Salvador’s initial offer to repurchase its bonds amounted to about $1.749 million.
This is not the first time El Salvador has made an advance purchase of its bonds, since in 2022 it launched two similar operations and bought bonds for $647 million.
This article has been translated after first appearing in El Salvador