Late on Friday afternoon (19 August) headlines appeared on Reuters stating that the “Australia debt agency plans lengthening yield curve with new 30Y bond issue.” The accompanying Reuters article referenced commentary by the head of the Australian Office of Financial Management (AOFM) in an investor update in Asia to report that “Australia is actively considering lengthening its yield curve with a new 30-year bond to be issued by June next year.” This would be in addition to a new “2041 bond to support the 20-year futures contract.”
The AOFM has been progressively lengthening its nominal curve for a number of years. In 2011 it announced an extension out to 15 years and then in 2013 it extended the yield curve out to 20 years. More recently it has been issuing out as far as 24 years to provide bonds that will roll down to inclusion into the 20Y bond future.
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David Llewellyn-Smith is Chief Strategist at the MB Fund and MB Super. David is the founding publisher and editor of MacroBusiness and was the founding publisher and global economy editor of The Diplomat, the Asia Pacific’s leading geo-politics and economics portal.
He is also a former gold trader and economic commentator at The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, the ABC and Business Spectator. He is the co-author of The Great Crash of 2008 with Ross Garnaut and was the editor of the second Garnaut Climate Change Review.
