(Business News Americas) - "Venezuelan state oil firm PDVSA's US$5bn bond issue has been oversubscribed threefold, newspaper El Universal quoted energy and oil minister Rafael Ramírez as saying.

Specifically, orders totalled 500,000 during the March 26-29 bookbuilding period, said Ramírez, who is also PDVSA president. The company could have sold another two issues of similar size with the leftover orders, although Ramírez said there were no plans to do so in the short or mid-term.

Bond proceeds will go to E&P efforts to expand production to 5.8Mb/d over the next five years.

Dutch banking major ABN Amro and local stockbrokers Econoinvest are issue leaders. Buyers of the PDVSA bonds will be exempt from revenue tax on the investment, finance minister Rodrigo Cabezas said. A decree to that effect has been issued and will appear in the official gazette"