March 01, 2010, 11:42 PM EST

By Yusuke Miyazawa and David Yong

March 2 (Bloomberg) -- Japan Bank for International Cooperation, the state-run lender that backed a 100 billion yen (USD1.1 billion) Samurai bond issue by the Philippines last month, approached Vietnam and Mongolia to discuss similar sales.

“Vietnam is seriously considering tapping the market with our guarantee,” said Hiroki Sekine, deputy division chief of JBIC’s Asia and Oceania finance department. The Tokyo-based lender is also working with Mongolia, though “the process will take time because we need to do due diligence on its credit profile,” he said in a telephone interview yesterday.

The Philippines sold 10-year yen-denominated notes in Japan on Feb. 23, 95 percent-guaranteed by JBIC, to help fund a widening deficit. JBIC provided support to yen bonds sold by Indonesia, Mexico and Colombia last year after saying in May that it started a 500 billion yen program to help Asian developing nations reduce their borrowing costs amid the global credit freeze.

Samurai bond sales plunged 43 percent to 1.3 trillion yen last year after Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. became the first U.S. borrower to default on its yen notes in Japan. The extra yield investors demand to own Samurai bonds instead of similar- maturity Japanese government debt last averaged 1.55 percentage point, a Nomura Securities Co. index shows, and narrowed from as much as 5.03 percentage points in March 2009 amid the thaw in global credit markets.

Project Finance

Vietnam’s “government is looking for the appropriate projects to match to our facility,” Sekine said. Tran Xuan Ha, a Vietnamese deputy finance minister, couldn’t immediately be reached for comment today.

The Southeast Asian nation sold USD1 billion of 10-year bonds in January, raising money for energy and infrastructure projects to support growth in an economy battling a shortage of foreign exchange and accelerating inflation.

Mongolia plans to sell as much as USD1.2 billion of bonds overseas this year in the Central Asian nation’s first “benchmark” offering of dollar-denominated debt, Finance Minister Sangajav Bayartsogt said in an interview last month.

While the government favors dollars for the sale, “Japanese banks are giving us very attractive proposals,” Bayartsogt said in Ulan Bator on Feb. 9.

Discussion with Mongolia are “still in a preliminary stage,” according to JBIC’s Sekine.

Mongolia, which shares a border with China and Russia, is seeking USD25 billion in foreign investment over five years to help mine metal and coal deposits. The government has said it aims to boost living standards in a country where per capita income is about USD2,000 a year.

“Japan has a strong track record of investing and supporting institutions in central Asia,” said Alisher Djumanov, who as chief executive officer of Eurasia Capital Management in Uzbekistan helps manage about USD100 million of investments in Mongolia and Central Asia. “It wants to be involved in the region economically and politically.”

--With assistance from Michio Nakayama in Tokyo, Michael Forsythe in Beijing and John Duce in Hong Kong and Nguyen Dieu Tu Uyen in Hanoi. Editors: Tom Kohn, Will McSheehy

To contact the reporters on this story: Yusuke Miyazawa in Tokyo at ymiyazawa3@bloomberg.net; David Yong in Singapore at dyong@bloomberg.net.

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Will McSheehy at +65 6212 1140 or wmcsheehy@bloomberg.net; Sandy Hendry at shendry@bloomberg.net.