“Demand for the new Eurobonds surpassed all our expectations…We upped the ceiling of the issue to $1.2 billion from one billion dollars initially due to the high demand from investors,” she said.

El Hassan said that 90 investors from Lebanon and abroad – from American, European, and other countries- subscribed to the securities, and the final order book was $3.4 billion.

Local investors and banks subscribed to 70 percent of the securities while the rest (or 30 percent) went to international investors, El Hassan said.

El Hassan said that Lebanon has benefited from the falling interest rates. “The interest rate on the bonds was 6.5 percent initially but it fell to 6.375 percent as demand increased,” she said.

El Hassan said that the Ministry stopped issuing Treasury Bills (T-Bills) in the local currency temporarily and will resume selling T-Bills securities at the beginning of April.

“The current surplus at the Treasury account stands at $4.3 billion but it will drop to $3 billion by the end of this month, which prompts us to resume selling T-Bills,” she said.

The Minister said that the Ministry is mulling several options to finance the increasing investment and non-investment expenditures in the 2010 draft budget.

She said one option mulled is increasing the Value Added Tax (VAT) which will, if approved by the council of ministers, “come along a basket of decisions which will not impact directly on the poor and middle income people.”

El Hassan said that one other option taken into consideration is improving the contrbution of the private sector in investment projects rather than increasing taxes or borrowing more money. El Hassan said that she favors this option, which “will need several governmental decisions to be implemented.”