NDMC completes SAR 125 bln borrowing plan for 2021, with 61% local financing: Al-Jadaan

Minister of Finance Mohammed Al-Jadaan

The National Debt Management Center (NDMC) announced the successful completion of its funding plan for 2021 at nearly SAR 125 billion. 

This came as part of the public debt strategy adopted to fulfill the needs of public finances, seize available investment opportunities locally and overseas, and manage risks, Minister of Finance Mohammed Al-Jadaan said.

The borrowing plan included the issuance of debt instruments of about SAR 125 billion. The 2021 funding focused on fixed-rate instruments to hedge against policy rate fluctuations.

The NDMC arranged issuance of sovereign bonds worth EUR 1.5 billion with the highest negative yield issuance ever outside the European Union. The SAR 6.8 billion worth of issuance was 3.3x covered (nearly EUR 5 billion), underscoring the Kingdom’s leading position in global markets.

Additionally, $3 billion finance (SAR 11.3 billion) was provided by Korean Trade Insurance Corporation (KSURE) at the beginning of 2021. The NDMC also completed the second early partial repurchase of bonds and sukuk maturing in 2022, at a total value of more than SAR 33 billion.

Al-Jadaan added that local funding represented 60.5% of the 2021 borrowing plan, while international funding represented 39.5%. Moreover, several financing channels were created, including government alternative funding, early repurchases of local government issuances, and the structuring of green financing framework as part of the new initiatives and finance channels to be rolled out in 2022.

The upward revision of credit ratings assigned by rating agencies to “Stable” affirms the efficiency of the financial system, the Saudi minister concluded.