The National Treasury Management Agency (NTMA) has reached two thirds of its funding target for this year after selling €1.25 billion of bonds on Thursday. The agency sold €800 million of bonds that are due in 10 years and priced to carry a market interest rate – or yield – of 3.242 per cent, it said in a statement. It also sold €450 million of bonds that will mature in 2055. The yield on these was set at 3.822 per cent. With the completion of auction, the NTMA has issued €9.5 billion of benchmark bonds in 2026, compared to its target of between €10 billion and €14 billion. Global bond yields have been volatile so far this year, driven by speculation over central bank rate moves to curb the inflationary impact of the Middle East conflict. The European Central Bank (ECB) raised its main rates by a quarter of a percentage point last month. The yield on the Republic’s benchmark 10-year bonds rose from a low of 2.85 per cent in February, before the Iran war started, to peak of almost 3.4 per cent in May. It has jumped from about 3 per cent to as high as 3.3 per cent earlier on Thursday, before the bond auction. NTMA chief executive Frank O’Connor said on Wednesday the agency’s annual interest bill will likely double from €3 billion currently to “somewhere in the region of €6 billion” by the early 2030s.[ Harris defends likely borrowing for funds even as Irish interest bill set to doubleOpens in new window ]This will result from the NTMA having to refinance at higher rates debt raised when global borrowing costs were at ultra-low levels in the past – and the fact that Government debt is poised to rise from €210 billion at the end of last year to “close to” €250 billion.About €20 billion of debt will need to be refinanced both in 2029 and 2030, the highest levels in about a decade, including initial repayments of European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF) loans granted during the State’s international bailout 16 years ago.