From Bloomberg

Ivory Coast plans to sell $500 million of bonds in the first half of next year, returning to international markets three years after defaulting on $2.3 billion of debt.

The world’s largest cocoa producer will sell five-year bonds, Emmanuel Ahoutou, cabinet director for Prime Minister Daniel Kablan Duncan, said in an interview Dec. 11 in the capital, Yamoussoukro. The government will seek a credit rating after the Washington-based International Monetary Fund said last week that it has no objections to the government’s plans to sell debt, Ahoutou said.

“The $500 million will be used to fund public investments over the period of 2014 to 2015,” Ahoutou said. “The IMF is monitoring the management of the public debt policy.”

Ivory Coast is emerging from more than a decade of political turmoil following a civil war in 2002 and former President Laurent Gbabgo’s refusal to hand over the presidency after losing the 2010 election. The government defaulted on the debt in January 2011, less than a year after the bonds were sold. The former French colony joins African nations in selling a record amount of debt this year to finance energy and infrastructure projects in the world’s poorest region.

The yield on African sovereign debt has risen 146 basis points, or 1.46 percentage points, since the end of April, according to JPMorgan Chase & Co. indexes. The Federal Reserve said in May that it’s considering reducing the amount of government bonds it buys to stimulate the economy, pushing yields on emerging-market debt higher.

Written by Baudelaire Mieu and Olivier Monnier/Read more at Bloomberg