Philippine Napocor To Buy $150M From Forex Mkt-Sources
Tuesday, December 13, 2005
MANILA (Dow Jones)--State-owned National Power Corp. (NAP.YY), the Philippines' principal energy supplier, plans to buy at least $150 million from the spot currency market before the end of the year to be able to pay off its maturing foreign debt obligations, sources at the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas said Monday.
"With the peso appreciating, it makes sense for them to buy from the market. Anyway, there's a lot of it," said a source in the central bank. He said the central bank expects to end 2005 with gross international reserves of $18.3 billion.
Officials from National Power, also known as Napocor, weren't immediately available for comment.
Last month, officials said Napocor doesn't plan to issue more dollar-denominated bonds or tap new foreign-currency loans for the rest of the year.
Napocor raised PHP5.6 billion via the sale of seven-year zero-coupon bonds in November and PHP5 billion in five- and seven-year fixed-rate bonds in May.
It has also raised $400 million from foreign commercial lenders earlier this year.
The utility expects to break even this year and post a net profit starting next year, helped by an increase in electricity tariffs and the government's absorption of two-fifths of its PHP500 billion debt in December 2004.
posted by philpower @ 11:30 AM,
