Japan Bank for International Cooperation, the state-run lender that backed a 100 billion yen ($1.1 billion) Samurai bond issue by the Philippines last month, approached Vietnam and Mongolia to discuss similar sales, the Bloomberg said.

"Vietnam is seriously considering tapping the market with our guarantee," said Hiroki Sekine, deputy division chief of JBIC’s Asia and Oceania finance department. The Tokyo-based lender is also working with Mongolia, though "the process will take time because we need to do due diligence on its credit profile," he said in a telephone interview.

The Philippines sold 10-year yen-denominated notes in Japan on Feb. 23, 95 percent-guaranteed by JBIC, to help fund a widening deficit. JBIC provided support to yen bonds sold by Indonesia, Mexico and Colombia last year after saying in May that it started a 500 billion yen program to help Asian developing nations reduce their borrowing costs amid the global credit freeze.

amurai bond sales plunged 43 percent to 1.3 trillion yen last year after Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. became the first U.S. borrower to default on its yen notes in Japan. The extra yield investors demand to own Samurai bonds instead of similar- maturity Japanese government debt last averaged 1.55 percentage point, a Nomura Securities Co. index shows, and narrowed from as much as 5.03 percentage points in March 2009 amid the thaw in global credit markets.

Vietnam’s "government is looking for the appropriate projects to match to our facility," Sekine said. Tran Xuan Ha, a Vietnamese deputy finance minister, couldn’t immediately be reached for comment today.

The Southeast Asian nation sold $1 billion of 10-year bonds in January, raising money for energy and infrastructure projects to support growth in an economy battling a shortage of foreign exchange and accelerating inflation.

According to the Bloomberg, Mongolia plans to sell as much as $1.2 billion of bonds overseas this year in the Central Asian nation’s first "benchmark" offering of dollar-denominated debt, Finance Minister Sangajav Bayartsogt said in an interview last month.