Singapore, 13 March 2001..The Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) today released the latest results of the 2000 Survey of the Singapore Corporate Debt Market.

The latest survey shows that the strong interest in the Singapore corporate debt market in recent years has not let up, and has in fact, been growing from strength-to-strength. The total amount of corporate debt issuance in 2000 was an impressive S$50.5 billion, registering a significant 159% increase from S$19.5 billion issued in 1999. This is also the largest growth of the corporate debt issuance in Singapore thus-far, since the survey first started in 1995.

The number of corporate debt issues also doubled last year, from 497 issues in 1999 to 807 issues in 2000. Non-S$ denominated bonds continued to dominate corporate debt issues here, with 435 non-S$ issues totalling S$36.1 billion in 2000, compared to 372 or S$14.4 billion worth of S$-denominated bonds.

Last year also saw a growing diversification in the type of issuers tapping the Singapore corporate debt market. Where in the past, the bulk of the issuance were from property companies, in 2000, there has been strong issuance growth from corporates in other industry sectors such as engineering, logistics, transportation and food. There has also been an increase in the issuance of structured products such as asset-backed securities.

Further reflecting the growing maturity of the Singapore corporate debt market, the survey also showed that the tenors of the S$ denominated bonds were fairly distributed across a range of maturities, although non-S$ denominated bonds tended to concentrate on shorter-end debt securities of less than 1 year.

Click here (28.5 KB) for the full results of MAS' survey of the Singapore corporate debt market.

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