By Our Reporter - 17.07.2007

A United States-based Nigerian news agency, Empowered Newswire, reported that a recent report of the World Bank entitled: Financial Flows to Developing Countries: Recent Trends and Prospects, concluded that Nigeria had reached the point where it could seek to sell sovereign bonds in the international market for the first time in its history.

The World Bank report was said to have been released last month and circulated in official circles in Washington DC, United States and was made available to Empowered Newswire.

According to the report, although by 2006, almost 90 per cent of developing countries had been able to access bank lending or syndicated bank loan, a few of them, excluding Nigeria, had been able to access private bonds.

The buyers of sovereign bonds in the international market are normally large investors, including investment banks, pension funds, mutual funds, commercial banks, insurance companies and other countries.

For such sovereign bonds as at 2006, only 40 per cent of developing countries - 56 out of the 135 analysed countries - had issued sovereign bonds in the past 27 years.