West Virginia has sold $600 million in general obligation road bonds and generated more than $746.5 million in proceeds to be used for highway, bridge, and secondary road construction projects, Governor Jim Justice announced.
“This program is truly bringing prosperity to West Virginia in many ways and today’s sale of these bonds is going to keep all of this goodness going for years to come,” Justice said.
“By giving our entire transportation infrastructure these much-needed improvements, not only are we are providing jobs for people to work on these projects, but we’re also building the roads that are going to bring more and more people and businesses into our great state for the long haul.
“I thank all those who were so instrumental in making this sale a reality, especially our Secretary of Revenue Dave Hardy and Secretary of Transportation Byrd White.”
This bond sale was approved by voters in 2017, and in the two years since, more than 500 projects have been completed spanning more than 1,100 miles of roadways, the governor's office announced.
The bonds were sold competitively on Tuesday in two batches, with Jefferies LLC and Citigroup Global Markets submitting the winning respective bids, it said.
Based on recent meetings on Wall Street with each of the Big Three credit rating agencies—Moody's, Standard & Poor's, and Fitch Group—the agencies rated the bonds “Aa2,” “AA-,“ and “AA,” respectively.
The state’s strong credit rating and positive market conditions allowed the state to lock-in an attractive blended borrowing rate of 2.999 percent on the $600 million of general obligation bonds offered as part of this transaction, according to the governor.
In May 2018 West Virginia locked in a low borrowing rate of 3.575 percent on the state’s first issuance of general obligation bonds as part of the Roads-to-Prosperity Program offered in the amount of $800 million.
Taken together, the state has secured a strong blended borrowing rate of 3.324 percent on $1.4 billion of the $1.6 billion of general obligation bonds to be sold as a part of the Roads to Prosperity Program.
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