(February 27 – 11:50 ET) – Finance Minister Paul Martin today tabled the government’s Debt Management Strategy for fiscal year 2001-2002 in the House of Commons and the Senate.

No major restructuring of domestic debt programs is planned during fiscal 2001-2002. Bond and Treasury bill programs are expected to operate at levels similar to those of 2000-2001.

Planned initiatives include increasing the target benchmarks for 10- and 30-year bonds from between $9 billion and $12 billion to between $12 billion and $15 billion. Other initiatives include moving to smaller, more frequent bond buybacks with target volumes announced quarterly, and extending the pilot cash management bond buyback program into fiscal 2001-2002.

The government says the focus of debt management will be to ensure that debt-servicing costs are kept low and stable over time, while maintaining a well-functioning market for Government of Canada securities. “To that end, the government will maintain a prudent debt structure with the target fixed-rate share of the debt maintained at two-thirds.”
-IE Staff