Due to robust market response, the Belize City Council has wrapped up the first 10 million dollars tranche of its bond offering early.
As we told you - there were more offers than there were bonds available - and so the council decided to wrap it up.
The Mayor explained:
Darrell Bradley - Mayor, Belize City Council
"The investment has been significant, and it a fair mix between strategic institutional investors, and person who just wanted to a $10,000. We have a couple people who just invested $200 because they had indicated that they symbolically wanted to invest in the building of their city. So, it's a good cross-section. It's not a lot of bondholders. It's a manageable group. What we've done is that we've closed that, so we're taking offers now for the second $10 million, and we've gotten some healthy responses, and we've already accepted bids on the second tranche, which will be released in 4 to 6 months' time. And we expect that this will be subscribed to fully as well."
Jules Vasquez
"So then, when will you be able to draw down the funds?"
Darrell Bradley
"Well, we'll be able to draw down funds immediately. We are going to continue the payments on Freetown Road and Mapp Street. And those will be the first streets that will be paid for by bond proceeds, and we're going to be doing Chetumal Street in very near future. That work is going to start next week. And so, we have a list of streets that we want to get done before the Christmas, and come January, we're going to go full-steam in implementation. The entire project is supposed to take 8 months."
Jules Vasquez
"So, at the end of 8 months, all $20 million will have been spent?"
Darrell Bradley
"At end of 8 months, all $20 million will be spent, and we expect that with the streets that we have done already, we're supposed to have somewhere around 140 - 150 streets."
The next bond offering of 5 million dollars will be launched in four to six months...
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