BELARUS NEWS AND ANALYSIS

DATE:

06/12/2006

Belarussian Finance Ministry to sign syndicated loan agreement forupwards of 50 mln euros

MINSK. Dec 6 (Interfax) - The Belarussian Finance Ministry will sign an agreement on December 8 to raise a second syndicated loan for more than 50 million euros.

"All the documents are ready and I will sign the agreement on December 8 to raise a syndicated loan for more than 50 million euros. We plan to receive the loan on good terms. The terms are better than those under which we raised a syndicated loan in 2005," Finance Minister Nikolai Korbut told reporters on Wednesday.

Germany's BayernLB and Russia' VTB (RTS: VTBR) are organizing the loan, he said.

Belarus will pay $32 million on a debut syndicated loan by the end of the year, Korbut said.

It was announced earlier that the loan would be 65 million euros amid an initially announced subscription from 50 million euros to 75 million euros. The loan is being raised at an annual rate of Euribor + 3.5% and will be used to finance the country's budget deficit in 2007, which will be 1.4 trillion Belarussian rubles, or 1.5% of GDP.

In December 2005, the Finance Ministry raised a debut syndicated loan for $32 million amid an announced subscription of 415 million at a one-year rate of Libor + 4.25% with the possibility of extension. VTB, Raiffeisen Zentralbank Oesterreich AG and Belarus' Priorbank, part of the Raiffeisen banking group, organized that loan.

The official exchange rate on December 6 was 2,140 Bel. rubles/$1

Source:

http://www.interfax.com/3/219885/news.aspx