Odessa hosted VIII CIS and Baltic Region Bond Congress

27.07.2011

The eighth annual CIS and Baltic Region Bond Congress organized by Cbonds agency took place on June 16-17 in Odessa. This year's conference attracted a record number of participants: 330 people from 16 countries. Among them were representatives of government authorities, banks, investment and asset management companies, issuers, ratings agencies and other institutions.
Participants of the macroeconomics section focused on the problem of huge national debt and the associated prospects for sovereign defaults in Europe, interest rates, inflation, QE3. After a series of disappointing forecasts "congressmen" moved on to discuss the situation on domestic debt markets of the CIS countries.
The Belarus section generated particular interest. "The country's economy is going through hard times. On the other hand, we know comprehensible recipes and ways to resolve the crisis, and, therefore, hope that this crisis will be a cleansing," said Dmitry Golukhov, Deputy Minister of Belarus Economy, in his presentation. "We believe that the preferred scenario is the one of reasonable debt financing," the official added, referring to the expected financial injections from EurAsEC and the IMF.
According to Sergei Mukhanov, Director of International and Stock Market Operations at Alfa-Bank (Belarus), despite the difficult economic situation, the debt market has very good prospects: it primarily needs a new class of investors, liquid secondary market, developed infrastructure and public issues by good names.
For Ukraine this year is a year of the corporate bond market restoration. In the first half of 2011, the overall size of new market issues was about 4.8 billion hryvnias, while 10-20 issuers by non-financial sector are expected in the second half of the year.
In 2011, prospective borrowers from the CIS could include several Azerbaijan companies, which are looking to enter the Eurobond market. Following representatives of the corporate sector, the long-awaited issue by the sovereign borrower may soon appear on the market as well.
Materials and presentations of the conference speakers are available at the conference web page.

Read a detailed report on the conference at on-line version of Cbonds Review.