The short version
The Republic of Congo, issuer name The Republic of Congo, has two bonds in our priced set. Both are borrowings in US dollars, both pay a fixed rate of 9.500% that never changes, and both are amortising — meaning the amount borrowed is repaid in slices on a set schedule rather than in a single lump at the end. The opposite arrangement, one repayment on the maturity date, is called a bullet, and it is what most people picture when they think of a bond.
Because these are amortising, the maturity date on each line is only the date of the last instalment. Repayment actually begins earlier — in 2031 on one bond and 2032 on the other — and runs in five equal steps of 20% of the principal each. Neither bond has repaid any principal yet.
What makes this page different from most of our country pages is where those schedules come from. On several other countries we have had to work out the shape of the instalments from what similar bonds do, and we say so. Here we did not have to: each prospectus states the redemption structure in so many words. That is set out in full below.
Two other Congolese lines exist in the record and are not priced here — one deliberately held back, one that has been repaid and no longer exists. Both are explained further down rather than left out silently.
Read this first: there are two Congos, and this is the Brazzaville one
This page is about the Republic of Congo, whose capital is Brazzaville. It is a different country, with a different government and a different set of bonds, from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, whose capital is Kinshasa. The DR Congo has its own page here: the DR Congo page.
This is not a pedantic distinction. Our tracker records that data vendors conflate the two: cbonds listed a DR Congo bond maturing in 2037, ISIN XS3344646958, under the heading Republic of Congo. If you take a vendor's country label at face value you can end up reading one country's terms as though they belonged to the other.
The bond terms themselves settle it. The two Republic of Congo lines on this page carry the ISINs XS3295059367 and XS3376882687, both pay 9.500%, and both mature in the mid-2030s — 2035 and 2036. The DR Congo lines are XS3344646875 and XS3344646958, and belong on the DR Congo page. An ISIN is the international identification code unique to a single bond, so it is the most reliable thing to check: if the code is not one of the two shown on this page, the bond is not one of these.
There is a second tell in the repayment schedules. The Republic of Congo lines repay in five equal instalments, taken from the issuer's prospectus. The DR Congo schedules on our other page are three-instalment schedules inferred from what comparable bonds do, and are flagged there as an inference rather than a published fact.
The two live bonds
Both are in US dollars, both pay interest twice a year, and both are recorded with a day count convention of 30E/360 — the market rule for working out how much interest has built up between payment dates, which treats every month as 30 days and every year as 360. The day count is a convention assumption rather than something we have read in the document, and is listed again under what we are not sure about. The ISINs shown are the Reg S codes: Reg S is the tranche of an international bond aimed at investors outside the United States.
9.500% due 17 February 2035
The first of the two, sold in February 2026. Our tracker records its terms from the issuer's own prospectus rather than from a data vendor.
Principal is repaid in five equal instalments of 20% each, on the February payment dates of 2031 through 2035. After each one the amount still outstanding steps down — to 80%, then 60%, 40%, 20% and finally nothing. No principal has been repaid yet.
- Currency
- US dollars confirmed
- Coupon
- 9.500%, fixed for the life of the bond confirmed
- Issue date
- 17 February 2026 confirmed
- Final maturity
- 17 February 2035 confirmed
- Amount outstanding
- US$700,000,000 confirmed
- Repayment
- 5 equal instalments of 20% each, on 17 February 2031, 2032, 2033, 2034 and 2035 confirmedThe prospectus states that the notes are redeemed in five equal instalments, so this is a published schedule and not an assumption of ours confirmed
- Interest dates
- 17 February and 17 August confirmed
- Day count
- 30E/360 inferred
- Denomination
- US$200,000 inferred
9.500% due 26 May 2036
The second and larger line, sold in May 2026. Our tracker records that it refinanced an older 9.875% bond due 2032, which no longer exists — see the note below on the lines we do not price.
It repays on the same shape as the 2035: five equal instalments of 20% each, here on the May payment dates of 2032 through 2036. No principal has been repaid yet.
- Currency
- US dollars confirmed
- Coupon
- 9.500%, fixed for the life of the bond confirmed
- Issue date
- 26 May 2026 confirmed
- Issue price
- 97.365% — the price at which the bond was first sold, a term of the deal rather than anything about it today confirmed
- Final maturity
- 26 May 2036 confirmed
- Amount outstanding
- US$850,000,000 confirmed
- Repayment
- 5 equal instalments of 20% each, on 26 May 2032, 2033, 2034, 2035 and 2036 confirmedAs with the 2035, the five-instalment structure is stated in the prospectus itself confirmed
- Interest dates
- 26 May and 26 November confirmed
- Day count
- 30E/360 inferred
- Denomination
- US$200,000, in multiples of US$1,000 above that confirmed
These instalment schedules are confirmed, not assumed
It is worth being explicit about this, because on other pages we have to say the opposite. For a bond that repays in instalments, two things have to be known: when the instalments fall, and how the principal is divided between them. Very often the second of those is not published anywhere we can reach, and we have to assume an even split and flag it as our assumption.
For both Republic of Congo lines the division is stated in the offering document. Our tracker records that each prospectus says the notes are redeemed in five equal instalments — 20% of the principal at a time — and that this is taken from the prospectus rather than from a pattern observed in comparable bonds. The schedules on this page are therefore confirmed in the same way the coupon and the maturity date are confirmed.
Our tracker also notes what would have gone wrong without that document. The instinct from similar African sovereign amortisers was a three-instalment schedule; reading the prospectus produced a five-instalment one instead. Assuming three would have been wrong.
Two Congolese lines that are not on this page
The first is the 6% due 2029, ISIN XS0334989000. Our tracker holds it back deliberately. It is a restructured note with a step-up and step-down coupon — restructured meaning its terms were rewritten at some point after it was first issued, and a step-up or step-down coupon meaning the interest rate changes at fixed dates during the bond's life rather than staying flat. Our calculations assume a fixed coupon, so a bond whose coupon moves would be handled incorrectly without any obvious sign that anything was wrong. Our tracker applies the same rule it applied in Ghana and Zambia and keeps the line out rather than showing a number we do not trust.
The second is the 9.875% due 2032, ISIN XS3223166409, which is simply gone. Our tracker records that it was tendered and then cleaned up by redemption during 2026, and refinanced by the 2035 and 2036 lines above. A tender is an offer by the borrower to buy its bonds back from holders; a clean-up redemption is the step that retires whatever small remainder is left afterwards. Nothing of that bond survives, which is why it is described here rather than listed above.
What we are not sure about
Our tracker keeps its own list of things still to confirm. It is short on this country, because the terms came from the issuer's prospectus rather than from second-hand records, but it is not empty and we repeat it here rather than smoothing it over.
The day count convention is assumed
Both bonds are carried with a 30E/360 day count, which is the ordinary convention for dollar bonds of this kind, but our tracker records it as an assumption to be confirmed against the body of the prospectus rather than a term we have read there. It is the one field on both lines that is flagged this way.
Our tracker describes the effect of getting this wrong as sitting below its own tolerance threshold — it would change accrued interest calculations at the margin rather than change what the bond is. It is still an assumption, so it is labelled as one.
The denomination on the 2035 is a convention, the one on the 2036 is confirmed
A bond's denomination is the smallest amount of it anyone can hold. For the 9.500% due 2036 our tracker confirms US$200,000, with multiples of US$1,000 above that, from the document. For the 9.500% due 2035 the US$200,000 figure is carried as a market convention rather than a confirmed term, so it is tagged as inferred above.
Where every figure here comes from
Every term on this page traces to a public record. Our tracker names the documents below. It gives no full web addresses for them and we do not link to data vendors, so all of these are cited in words.
| What it tells us | Source |
|---|---|
| The coupon, the issue and maturity dates, the interest dates, the amounts, the denomination and the five-instalment redemption schedule on both bonds | The issuer's own prospectuses for the 2035 and the 2036 notes, published by the Republic of Congo's finance ministry at finances.gouv.cg |
| The ISINs and the amounts, cross-checked | A Terrapin record for XS3376882687 and a cbonds country page covering both ISINs and sizes |
| The February 2026 US$700m deal with its tender, and the June 2026 US$850m deal that refinanced the 9.875% due 2032 | Cleary Gottlieb deal notes |
| That the 6% due 2029 is a step-up restructured note, which is why it is held back | cbonds and MarketScreener records |
| The day count on both bonds and the denomination on the 2035 | Not from a document — these are market conventions we have assumed, flagged as inferred above and still to be checked against the prospectus body |
How we work out the price
Nothing on this page is a price. Terms change rarely — a coupon, a maturity date and a repayment schedule are fixed when the bond is sold — so a reference page can state them once and stand. Prices change all day, so they live on the price page and only there. If a figure here ever disagrees with one there, this page is the one to distrust, and we would like to hear about it.
What the two have to do with each other is this. On a normal trading day a closing quote for these bonds reaches us from the market, and that anchors what the price page shows. Between closes the price moves with the things that move this market: US Treasury yields, how much extra return investors demand for African sovereign risk, market volatility and, for commodity exporters, commodity prices. Where a bond repays in instalments rather than in one go, the calculation also has to know how much of it is left on any given day — which is what the repayment schedules above are for. Get a schedule wrong and the published price is wrong.
Information only. This page is general educational material about how this market works. Nothing here is investment, financial, legal or tax advice, or a recommendation to buy or sell any security. Prices shown elsewhere on this site are indicative and are not an offer to trade.
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