Exceptional December for the Ministry of Finance
Despite still being in the voting phase of the 2025 finance bill, the Ministry of Finance has an exceptionally busy December ahead. There are six BTCT (short-term treasury bills) repayment deadlines, totaling 2,447 MTND (Mauritanian ouguiya), broken down as follows:
- BTCT 52 weeks 06/12/2024: 10 MTND
- BTCT 26 weeks 10/12/2024: 145 MTND
- BTCT 52 weeks 13/12/2024: 1260 MTND
- BTCT 52 weeks 18/12/2024: 4 MTND
- BTCT 26 weeks 18/12/2024: 1000 MTND
- BTCT 13 weeks 30/12/2024: 28 MTND
The Treasury has already scheduled a BTA (long-term treasury bond) auction for December 10, worth 1,260 MTND, the first major repayment deadline of the month. This time, the idea is to lighten the 2025 calendar and shift to long-term repayment maturities. This is likely to be attractive to financial institutions that can invest long-term at high rates. However, it is unclear whether the sums collected from the fourth tranche of the national loan will be used to pay off the BTCT on December 18 or if there will be another auction of similar size.
It is also worth noting that there will be a repayment of 500 MTND from the advance obtained from the BCT in 2020, bringing the total December repayments to 2,947 MTND.
On the external debt front, things are calm, with only one tranche of 34 MUSD (approximately 107 MTND) owed to Afreximbank. The total cost would therefore be 3,054 MTND.
The mission is, once again, daunting, but there is no doubt about the sovereign's repayment capacity. The only concern is that this will put pressure on other expenditure chapters, of which there are many.
