Colombia secured 2026 external financing through global bond sale: public credit director

BOGOTA, Feb 5 - Colombia has completed its planned external financing for 2026 through the issuance of global bonds, said Javier Cuellar, the director of public credit at the country's finance ministry, on Thursday.

Cuellar added that the preliminarily projected amount of domestic debt to be issued by the country this year is 85.2 trillion pesos ($23.37 billion).

Colombia has recently made "massive purchases of dollars, taking advantage of the exchange rate situation,” Cuellar said during a presentation at a bankers' conference in the city of Cartagena.

This year's financial plan initially envisaged issuing bonds worth around $4.9 billion, which Cuellar said have already been placed on the international market.

The government also plans to raise approximately $2.9 billion through loans from multilateral banks.

Of the total amount of debt projected to be issued locally with TES bonds, some 60 trillion pesos ($16.5 billion) will be placed on the market through auctions and some 9 trillion pesos ($2.4 billion) will be placed directly with investors, Cuellar said.

TES bonds are the second main source of domestic financing for public spending, behind tax collection.

Cuellar said that the preliminary figures are part of the fiscal plan that the finance ministry will present in the coming days.

“Everything is relatively calm, there is an appetite for risk, and what we are doing is precisely understanding that the best insurance we have today is to accumulate dollars,” Cuellar said.

Cuellar has been criticized by analysts and market agents for his financing strategy over the last year, which has included a series of local and external debt management operations like swaps and repurchases, in an attempt to reduce the cost of interest payments on his debt in the midst of deteriorating public finances.