The tender to buy back a portion of three of the central African country's 'Eurobonds' and swap them for a new $500 million eco-friendly 'blue bond' wasNow the transaction is expected to be priced on August 7 and to close on August 15, one of the sources said, citing market conditions. Fitchcredit rating to "AA+" on Tuesday, pushing U.S. Treasury yields higher.
The prices of Gabon's 2025 and two 2031 Eurobonds have fallen to near the levels they were being traded at when the tender was announced.The new "blue" bond - so called because some of the money goes towards ocean conservation - is intended to lower the interest rate Gabon is paying and generate significant savings over the next 15 years.
Gabon's beaches and coastal waters host about a third of the world's endangered leatherback turtles, the largest global population. At their simplest, debt-for-nature swaps see a country's debt bought up by a bank or specialist investor and replaced with cheaper debt, usually with a multilateral development bank "credit guarantee" or "risk insurance". The savings are intended to be used to fund conservation.
The U.S. International Development Finance Corporation is providing political risk insurance for the deal, as it did in Ecuador's