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Jan. 12 (Bloomberg) -- The European Central Bank spent between 1 billion euros ($1.3 billion) and 1.5 billion euros in government bonds in the last two days, according to Nomura International Plc estimates. The purchases were mostly of Portuguese government bonds, Nick Firoozye, head of interest-rate strategy at Nomura in London, said at a conference in Lisbon today. The ECB has stepped up its purchases of government bonds to stem a rise in yields on some nations’ debt. Portugal’s borrowing costs fell at a sale of 10-year bonds today, indicating investor concern the country will follow Greece and Ireland in seeking a bailout was easing. Portugal sold 599 million euros of 10-year bonds at an average yield of 6.716 percent, compared with a yield of 6.806 percent at the previous sale on Nov. 10. The auction was the first debt sale by any of the euro region’s most indebted countries this year. The decline in borrowing costs doesn’t mean the risk of Portugal asking for aid has disappeared, Firoozye said. “The auction went reasonably well, but it doesn’t deter us from our view because Portugal needs to go to the market on a monthly basis,” he said. It may have just postponed the request for EU aid “another month.”
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