Exclusive: Sweden National Debt Office Head of Funding: No Further Syndications in 2024

11 June 2024

By Aurėja Bobelytė – VILNIUS (Econostream) – The Swedish National Debt Office (NDO) has completed its syndications for this year, according to Johan Bergström, Head of Funding at NDO.

In an interview with Econostream on May 31 (transcript here), Bergström confirmed, ‘There are no more syndication plans for this year’.

The NDO had issued a $2 billion 2-year bond earlier this year, ‘which was well received in the market’, he said, adding that there were plans to issue in a foreign currency next year as well.

‘We will choose the most cost-efficient and low-risk execution method, which could be either a euro or a dollar bond, depending on market conditions at the time of execution’, he said.

Asked about maturities of Swedish government bonds, Bergström said that the average time of maturity for nominal bonds has been stable since 2010 standing at 5.5 years.

‘The tricky ones for us are the inflation-linked bonds, since we are above the target, it's hard to increase issuing more bonds because we're already over', he said. 'So, with the help of redemptions in the coming years, we will get back to a slightly longer, average maturity for the inflation-linked bonds as well.'

According to Bergström, if the budget were to turn out to be better or worse than expected, the NDO would correspondingly increase or decrease T-bill issuance.

‘That was very clear in 2020 when we issued quite a lot of T-bills going into the pandemic but then afterwards when the economy bounced back much quicker than expected', he said, '[i]t was an easy way to decrease the debt because the bills mature in a fairly narrow time horizon.’

Reflecting on the challenges ahead for Sweden’s debt issuance programme, he highlighted the need to maintain the attractiveness of nominal and inflation-linked bonds.

‘This ensures that our bonds remain a strong investment case, even though they are not as liquid as those offered by larger European debt issuers’, Bergström said.