March 25 (Bloomberg) -- Peru sold $1 billion of 10-year bonds in its first international offering in two years as it seeks to take advantage of a rally in emerging-market debt.

The government sold the bonds to yield 4.375 percentage points above U.S. Treasuries of similar maturity. Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and JPMorgan Chase & Co. managed the sale.

Emerging-market bonds have rallied since March 6 amid signs the U.S. economy is stabilizing and as the Federal Reserve started today to buy Treasuries for the first time since the 1960s in a bid to keep consumer borrowing costs low.

“The rally in risky assets in the past couple of weeks opens a window of opportunity for countries with strong fundamentals such as Peru,” said Boris Segura, an economist at Morgan Stanley in New York.

The extra yield investors demand to own developing-nation debt instead of Treasuries dropped 80 basis points, or 0.8 percentage point, to 6.15 percentage points, according to JPMorgan Chase & Co.’s EMBI Plus index.

The sale is the country’s first in international markets since Standard & Poor’s and Fitch Ratings last year gave its foreign debt an investment-grade rating. Peru’s foreign debt is rated BBB-, the lowest investment grade, by both S&P and Fitch, and one level lower at Ba1 by Moody’s Investors Service.

‘Good Defense’

Peru last sold dollar bonds in February 2007, issuing $1.2 billion of 6.55 percent securities due in 2037, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

The offering follows Panama’s sale last week of $323 million of dollar bonds maturing in 2015. Mexico, Brazil and Colombia also sold dollar bonds in the past two months.

Peru is the world’s largest silver miner and third-biggest copper producer. Lower commodity prices will cut economic growth to 5 percent this year from 9.8 percent in 2008, Finance Minister Luis Carranza said earlier this month.

“Peru will post one of the highest economic growth rates among Latin America’s main economies,” said Segura. The nation’s “international reserves and fiscal accounts are a good defense against the financial crisis.”

The Andean nation plans to sell as much as $2 billion dollars in foreign bonds this year, the government said in El Peruano state gazette yesterday. The government will seek to buy back its global bonds due 2014, according to the statement.

To contact the reporters on this story: Bryan Keogh in New York at bkeogh4@bloomberg.net; Andrea Jaramillo in Bogota at ajaramillo1@bloomberg.net

Last Updated: March 25, 2009 19:02 EDT