The Duterte administration will sell fresh debt papers to overseas investors, including the government’s maiden green bond issue, a document from the Bureau of the Treasurer revealed.

Based on a Treasury document obtained by reporters on Monday, March 21, the government is planing to raise funds through a benchmark-sized US dollar-denominated bond offering with tenures of five-, 10.5- and 25-years.

The document showed that initial price guidance for the five-year note is set at 125 basis points over Treasuries area, while the 10.5-year paper is at 165 basis points over Treasuries area and the 25-year bond at the 4.7 percent area.

Proceeds from the five-year and 10.5-year debt papers will be used for “general budget financing,” while the 25-year IOU is “to finance/refinance assets in line with the Republic’s Sustainable Finance Framework.”

Last Feb. 18, Finance Secretary Carlos G. Dominguez III announced that the Philippines will soon launch its maiden green bonds in the offshore debt markets.

Dominguez said the green issuance amounting to at least $500 million aims to help raise funds for the country’s clean energy projects and other sustainable initiatives.

Dominguez had said the sale of the debt securities, known as environmental, social and governance sovereign bonds, will be done “in the coming weeks.”

Bank of China, Citigroup, Credit Suisse, Deutsche Bank , Goldman Sachs, Mizuho Securities, Morgan Stanley, Standard Chartered and UBS are the lead managers and bookrunners for the three-tranche issue.

The Philippines’ maiden issuance of these green bonds forms part of the series of initiatives undertaking to implement concrete actions in the fight against climate change, given the “disappointing” response of Western countries.

“We cannot wait for the bureaucrats in the industrialized world to take their sweet time splitting hairs on the idea that the countries that polluted and continue to pollute the most must bear the greater part of the financial burden of reversing global warming,” Dominguez said.

Meanwhile, domestic investors continued to press for an increase in Philippine benchmark interest rates for short-term loans amid expectations that the US Federal Reserve will raised rates to temper inflation.

At Monday's auction of Treasury bills, the bellwether 91-day T-bill rate, which banks use in pricing their loans, rose to 1.536 percent from 1.305 percent previously.

The rates on the six-month IOUs increased to 1.607 percent from the previous 1.458 percent.

The yield on the one-year debt papers also inched up to 1.792 percent from 1.732 percent.