Ecuador Won’t Sweeten Buyback Offer as Oil Rises, Viteri Says

By Stephan Kueffner

May 28 (Bloomberg) -- Ecuador’s government won’t sweeten its offer to buy back defaulted bonds for 35 cents on the dollar even as the price of oil rises and makes it easier to meet investment targets, Finance Minister Maria Elsa Viteri said.

The buyback could shave about $2 billion off the country’s $10 billion in foreign bonds, Viteri said today in an interview in Guayaquil.

“The potential is pretty obvious for all too see,” Viteri said. “I can’t say what the exact savings will be yet.”

Ecuador made the offer to buy back defaulted bonds with a face value of $3.2 billion on May 26. The government, seeking to pressure bondholders into participating, has said it won’t improve the offer to those creditors who hold out from the buyback.

As oil, the country’s biggest export, tumbled from record highs reached in July 2008, President Rafael Correa halted payments in December of that year on $510 million of 2012 bonds and in March on $2.7 billion of 2030 bonds, saying the securities were “illegitimate” and “illegal.”