Gov­ern­ment on Tues­day an­nounced that it was propos­ing to raise $1 bil­lion through the is­sue of an eight-year, fixed rate bond that will pay a coupon rate of 4.10 per cent a year.

The bond is in­tend­ed to as­sist in fi­nanc­ing the gov­ern­ment's re­cur­rent ex­pen­di­ture and will be is­sued on Feb­ru­ary 14.

The is­sue is the sec­ond cen­tral gov­ern­ment bond for the 2017 fis­cal year. The first bond bond was is­sued on De­cem­ber 19, 2016 and was a six-year, fixed rate bond for $1 bil­lion, which had a coupon rate of 3.80 per cent.

The in­for­ma­tion mem­o­ran­dum an­nounc­ing the bond is­sue stat­ed that T&T's pub­lic debt to GDP ra­tio–which ex­cludes all se­cu­ri­ties is­sued for ster­il­iza­tion pur­pos­es–stood at 56.6 per cent at the end of De­cem­ber 2016, com­pared with 52.1 per cent one year ear­li­er.

The in­for­ma­tion mem­o­ran­dum al­so stat­ed that T&T had US$9.46 bil­lion in gross of­fi­cial re­serves at the end of De­cem­ber 2016, which was equiv­a­lent to 10.5 months of im­port cov­er.