OREANDA-NEWS. April 20, 2015. The CBR published an update on the debt redemption schedule for 2015. Overall, the regulator estimates that over 4Q14, short-term external debt (i.e. due in next 12 months) of banks declined by USD 4.1bn to USD 40.4bn; for corporates it decreased to USD 77.2bn (-USD 16.2bn).

However, one should treat these numbers carefully. We think that the CBR’s projections of foreign debt redemptions for banks are fairly precise, but corporate numbers are noisy, with different cross-border intergroup flows that are not debt in nature. Our corporate debt redemption estimates, derived from public databases, give us much more modest numbers.

Our calculations suggest that corporates are to redeem USD 24bn before the year end vs. the USD 34bn in loans projected by the CBR. However, we admit that our approach might suffer from out-dated data or omissions in bilateral deals. Nevertheless, April and May look fairly light in terms of foreign redemptions. There is a visible pick-up in the schedule with the peak falling in December.

Maxim Korovin, Tatiana Zueva
VTB Capital analysts