Category: Structured Finance

The Andean Development Corporation (CAF) has taken out a local-currency bank loan, the first time it has arranged such a credit with a Latin American bank. The soles-denominated loan, worth $15.5 million and taken out with Peru’s BBVA Banco Continental, is for the purpose of offering Peruvian micro-financial institutions a new source of local-currency financing. CAF usually raises financing by issuing securities or via a foreign-currency bank loan from an international bank.

Ferrocarriles Suburbanos, a subsidiary of CAF Mexico, part of Spain’s Construccion y Auxiliar de Ferrocarriles (CAF), has succeeded in raising new financing to complete the first stretch of its Mexico City suburban train project. The company has closed a $271 million syndicated loan led by Banesto, Santander and Banobras. The total cost of the project is estimated to come in at $613 million.

The Andean Finance Corporation (CAF) gave the go ahead to three loans to Venezuela totaling $850 million to finance housing and transportation programs and underwrite a $50 million bond offering from Electricidad de Caracas, a private utility. CAF also agreed to lend $60 million to Empresas Publicas de Medellin, which runs public services in the Colombian city of the same name.

Andean Development Corporation (CAF), the Caracas-based regional multilateral financial institution, is to follow up its landmark local-currency issue in Peru last month with an offering in Venezuelan bolivares. The Corporation is looking to place $100 million worth of local-currency bonds in Venezuela on June 13. The bolivar-denominated debt would be the first such paper to be issued by a multilateral in Venezuela. The five-year floating-rate bonds are expected to yield around 7%. Last month CAF successfully placed $75 million worth of 12-year local-currency bonds in Peru, the Corporation’s first bond issue in new soles and the largest such offering by a non-government issuer in the local market.

The Caracas-based Andean Development Bank (CAF) has signed at $80 million loan to Panama to be directed at improving and upgrading highways within the country, including the interoceanic route that runs parallel to the canal. Panama is contributing $45 million to the project.

The implementation of Guatemala’s free trade agreement with the US (CAFTA), which should have come into effect on May 1, has been delayed due to a lack of consensus in Congress. Guatemala’s president, Oscar Berger, a champion of the agreement, has called the delay a “tragedy.”

Temístocles Montás, technical secretary of the presidency of the Dominican Republic, addressed the challenges and opportunities facing his country and the other signatories of the DR-CAFTA free trade agreement as the keynote speaker at the first annual LatinFinance Dominican Republic-Central America conference. More than 300 delegates from the public and private sectors, as well as NGOs and multilateral banks gathered at the new Hilton hotel in Santo Domingo to discuss the opportunities and challenges afforded by the region’s nascent but evolving capital markets, the importance of a good business environment to capitalize on increased trade flows, the struggle to lower remittance costs and expand cross-border consumer finance, and the challenges faced in the energy and tourism sectors.