Namibia watching euro bond market

THE Bank of Namibia (BoN) left its repo rate unchanged at six per cent yesterday, saying there was still a need to nurture domestic growth to mitigate the impact of external factors.

Namibia has been talking to investors on a planned euro bond but would not be entering the market ‘until it calms down’, central bank Governor Ipumbu Shiimi told a news conference.He said the global economic picture had deteriorated since the previous meeting and the pace of activity in the domestic economy had moderated during the second quarter of 2011.The bank’s monetary policy committee (MPC) remained deeply concerned about the uncertainty surrounding global financial markets and the lack of investor confidence.’With the opportunity provided by the benign inflation outlook, the MPC decided to keep the repo rate unchanged at six per cent to support domestic growth in the face of the … prevailing global uncertainty,’ Shiimi said.Namibia launched an investor roadshow in September to sound out the level of interest in a debut euro bond offering, but earlier this month an analyst at one of the roadshow arrangers told a Thomson Reuters conference on Africa it had been ‘quite a hard sell’.’We have been talking to investors in the past couple of weeks,’ Shiimi said yesterday of the planned bond.’However, we will not enter the market until it calms down. The market is too volatile,’ he said, adding he hoped an EU summit on euro zone debt woes would lead to a credible plan out of the crisis. – Nampa-Reuters

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