Azernews.Az

By Bloomberg

Russia doesn’t expect to access international debt markets in 2016 after already ruling out issuing foreign bonds in 2015 to help finance its budget deficit, Finance Minister Anton Siluanov said.

The country, which has issued more than $22 billion of bonds abroad since 2010, is facing higher borrowing costs in global markets amid U.S. and European Union sanctions after President Vladimir Putin’s annexation of Crimea a year ago. Russia previously planned to borrow as much as $7 billion in 2016 and another $7 billion in 2017, according to the most recent budget approved by Putin.

“We should be more realistic and put in our budget internal borrowings as sources” to cover the deficit, Siluanov told reporters Monday in Moscow.

Russia’s credit rating was cut below investment grade by Moody’s Investors Service and Standard & Poor’s this year as policy makers struggle to keep economic growth. Russia may dip deeper into its Reserve Fund to cover its budget deficit amid shrinking revenue as the price of oil, the country’s biggest export, trades at six-year lows, pushing the economy toward a recession.

“This statement is yet another confirmation of just how difficult it is for Russia to borrow from the debt markets now at affordable rates,” Nicholas Spiro, managing director of London-based Spiro Sovereign Strategy, said by phone. “The longer this sentiment towards Russia remains -- at the very least an extremely careful sentiment -- the greater the doubt is that the Russian government will be able to continue on its own.”

The yield on the country’s $3 billion of notes due 2023 has slipped to 6.54 percent after climbing to a record 7.82 percent in December, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.