THE Philippine Dealing and Exchange Corp. (PDEx) said Friday that P266.4 billion worth of bonds had been listed on its platform so far this year, surpassing last year's total of P209.33 billion and nearing the P400-billion target for 2024.

"[There's] probably [a] good chance we're going to hit P400 [billion] this year. I'm a little more confident about that [because] we're at P266 [billion]," PDEx President and Chief Executive Officer Antonino Nakpil said.

Speaking to reporters during the listing of Bank of the Philippine Islands' (BPI) Sustainable, Environment and Equitable Development (SEED) bonds on Friday, Nakpil explained that his optimism came from the fact that almost all bond issuances since last year were oversubscribed.

"Even [though] last year we only issued P209 billion... out of the P209 billion, almost all of them, I think, were oversubscribed. All of our issuances up to this point [have been] oversubscribed," he added.

He noted that during the pandemic years, PDEx had listed P500 billion worth of bonds. "I think we did that in 2022, if not 2021. That's for [the] Covid years. During the Covid years, we were actually going up."

PDEx saw 15 bond listings by 14 companies, with two from BDO Unibank Inc. alone.

In January, BDO listed its P63.3-billion fixed rate Asean sustainability bonds due 2025 and last month it also listed another P55.7 billion of its Asean sustainability bonds due 2026.

"You'd like to see whether the banks, the financial institutions, should be lengthening their tariffs, because that means this is the right time to come out. So once you see one, you can expect there will be others," Nakpil said.

BPI was the latest company to list its P33.7-billion BPI SEED bonds due 2026 on PDEx.