YEREVAN, September 23. / ARKA /. A senior parliament member from the ruling Republican Party of Armenia was positive today about the first issue of Armenia’s foreign-currency bonds last week.

Armenia’s finance ministry said Friday it sold $750 million seven-year bond to price at a yield of 6.25%, attracting $3.25 billion in orders

"This means that the international organizations are more positive about the Armenian economy,’ Gagik Minasyan, head of a parliament committee on finance and budget affairs, told ARKA.

The main underwriters of the first issue of Armenian foreign-currency bonds are Deutsche Bank AG,  HSBC Bank plc and JPMorgan Securities plc .

"This is a new tool to raise funds, a fairly cheap  tool that will enable the government to  implement larger programs and get rid of loans with high interest rates that we had been forced to borrow in times of crisis,’ Minasyan said.

According to finance ministry data, Armenia’s  public debt (internal and external ) stood at 1.758.7 trillion drams as of late July this year, including some  268 billion drams in domestic debt  and  about 1.5 trillion  drams  in foreign debt. ($ 1 -406.71 drams). -0-