The government will issue Rp 3 trillion (about US$319 million) worth of bonds Jan. 24, the first of a planned series of bond issuances this year to help finance the state budget deficit, the Finance Ministry said Monday.

The fixed-rate, local-currency bonds on offer next week will consist of two series -- the FR0033 and FR0034 -- which will mature March 15, 2013, and June 15, 2021, respectively, the ministry said in a statement.

The auction for the bonds will be conducted next Tuesday by Bank Indonesia from 10 a.m. to noon -- and the results will be announced after 4 p.m. and settled on Jan. 26. It will be open to all investment banks, securities firms and fund managers approved by the central bank.

The government expects to raise Rp 24.9 trillion in net proceeds from the sales of rupiah-denominated and overseas bonds this year, mainly in a bid to plug the 2006 state budget deficit, which is estimated at Rp 22.4 trillion, around 0.7 percent of gross domestic product.

In addition to offering local-currency bonds, with plans to tap further into the local bond market by issuing retail bonds for individual investors, the government is also planning to issue another batch of global bonds this year.

The sale of this year's global bonds will be managed by Barclays Capital, JPMorgan Chase & Co. and UBS AG, the Finance Ministry's Director General of Treasury Mulia Nasution confirmed Monday, with their sales documents expected to be wrapped up within January and February.

The global bonds are expected to amount to at least $1 billion, Bloomberg said quoting sources from the ministry. The government had twice offered global bonds last year, totaling $2.5 billion.

Indonesia's bonds are currently rated as "junk" by global rating agencies. Standard and Poor's rates them at BB, or two levels below investment grade, while Moody's Investment Services rates them as B2, five levels below investment grade. Both gave the bonds a "stable outlook", downgraded from a "positive outlook" last year.

The bonds also fell Monday as market players speculated that the central bank would raise the benchmark interest rate -- which BI had kept unchanged at 12.75 percent last week on easing inflation -- to help support the rupiah.

Prices of the government's 14-percent bonds due on June 2009 fell 0.056 -- or Rp 560 per Rp 1 million face amount -- to 104.086, according to data from the Inter Dealer Market Association.

Their yields, which move inversely to their prices, rose 0.02 of a percentage point to 12.48 percent.

The rupiah fell on Monday by 1.1 percent on profit-taking to Rp 9,470 per U.S. dollar from Friday's Rp 9,370, after rallying to a 10-month high of Rp 9,345 last Thursday.