National Treasury Management Agency (NTMA) plans to sell two bonds in an auction on September 15th.

It will auction a 4 per cent bond maturing January 2014 and a 4.5 per cent bond maturing April 2020. The size of the auction will not be revealed until Friday.

NTMA has raised €24 billion of the €25 billion in borrowing the Government needs to run the State this year and to refinance debt. In recent months the spread between Irish and German bonds had narrowed to 153 basis points (1.53 percentage points) on August 18th, the date of the last NTMA bond auction.

That spread has widened in recent weeks and yesterday stood at 171 or 1.71 percentage points.