By Karla Palomo and Lester Pimentel
Dec. 12 (Bloomberg) -- Ecuadorean Policy Minister Ricardo Patino said he doesn’t know if the government bought back debt in recent weeks.
Quito-based newspaper El Comercio reported yesterday that the government repurchased $680 million of bonds after they sunk below 30 cents on the dollar following President Rafael Correa’s decision last month to withhold a $30.6 million interest payment. El Comercio cited “sources” it didn’t name for the information.
“I don’t know; it’s not my field,” Patino said in a Bloomberg Television interview in New York today. Patino, who served as Correa’s first finance minister last year, headed a government-created debt-auditing commission that said in a report in November that much of the country’s $10 billion of foreign debt is “illegal” and “illegitimate.”
Correa held back the interest payment on the 12 percent notes maturing in 2012, invoking a 30-day grace period that expires Dec. 15 to determine whether to pay the bonds. Patino said in Quito on Dec. 2 that Correa would decide on the payment by tomorrow.
“The decision on whether to pay is in the president’s hands,” Patino said today. “He has a menu of options.”
The 2012 bonds rose 1 cent on the dollar today to 32 cents, pushing the yield down 1.54 percentage points to 57.08 percent, according to JPMorgan Chase & Co. The bonds sank to as low as 14 cents last month.
No comments:
Post a Comment