The 3.5-year bond has an annual coupon of 1.75% and the seven-year one 3%. The annual coupon rate for the November 3-year bond, which was a private placement, was 4.7%.

The ministry said Slovenia has returned to the euro bond market successfully after three years and that the funds will be used to repay a five-year EUR 1.5bn bond due on Wednesday.

The orders for the 3.5-year bond totalled EUR 3.25bn and involved more than 200 submissions by different financial institutions, while more than 330 investors placed over EUR 6.25bn worth of orders for the 7-year tranche.

The ministry argued that the strong demand was a reflection of investors' trust in the country's stabilisation measures and announced that this would be the last international bond issue this year.

Analysts already assessed as Slovenia opened the book of orders that the situation in the market is favourable for the move with the yield on Slovenian bonds currently at a more than three-year low.

Investors' trust does not seem to have been shaken even by the Constitutional Court's decision last Friday to quash the real estate tax act, which was to bring in almost EUR 200m to the state budget.

The yield on the Slovenian bonds due in 2024 is currently at 3.62%, with the spread to the benchmark German bonds at 204 basis points, data from the electronic MTS exchange show.

The issue, which was managed by Barclays, Commerzbank, HSBC, Societe Generale and UniCredit Banka Slovenija, came after Slovenia conducted a series of roadshows in Ljubljana, London, Amsterdam, Paris, Munich, Frankfurt and Vienna.