A proportion of the Australian government's borrowing requirements may be dressed up as infrastructure bonds and marketed at retail investors.
Neil Hyden, chief executive of the Australian Office of Financial Management, said he expects to denominate about $8 billion to $9 billion of Commonwealth government bonds as Aussie Infrastructure Bonds and to issue those bonds over a period of years.
One infrastructure project the government will tie to the new look Aussie Bonds will be the national broadband network that the government has resolved will be owned and mostly funded by the government.
Hyden told an Australian Business Economists lunch in Sydney on Wednesday any infrastructure bonds would be structured similarly to Commonwealth Government bonds,
AAP reported.
"The details of how we do that are still to be worked out but I expect that it will be integrated with our other bond issuance," Hyden said.
"That is, they will look the same as Commonwealth Government bonds but with a different label, at least so far as the wholesale market is concerned."
Hyden said the infrastructure bonds could be longer-dated securities with maturity dates extending beyond 2023.