The government of Palau entered into an agreement with Japanese FinTech company Soramitsu to create a DLT platform for issuing and managing government bonds. Testing of the blockchain solution will begin in the current fiscal year, with a full launch scheduled for 2025.
Japanese tech company Soramitsu won a tender to develop a blockchain platform for the issuance and management of government bonds in Palau. This is reported by the local media.
The platform will be based on distributed ledger technology (DLT) and will allow the government of the Pacific island nation to issue bonds to individual investors, as well as manage principal and interest payments. Funding for the project totaled approximately 200 million yen (~$1.3 million). The project received support from Japan’s Ministry of Economy, Trade, and Industry, and Japan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Ministry of Finance will provide guidance to the Palau government on the management of the project once it’s fully operational, which is scheduled for 2025.
Palau uses the U.S. dollar as its national currency and doesn’t have its own bond platform. Most of the 18,000 citizens living on the 340 islands use U.S. banks. The new platform will allow the government to use the savings of citizens to finance public needs.
A year ago, the Palauan authorities, in cooperation with Ripple Labs, issued a stablecoin pegged to the U.S. dollar to increase the availability of domestic payments.
