A total of 28 professional investors and 7,304 retail investors participated in the public bond offering. Retail investors subscribed to bonds worth €29 million, the ministry said.

Estonian retail investors will receive 100 percent of the amount they subscribed to, Estonian professional investors an average of 26 percent and international investors 13 percent on average.

"Almost all the major financial market players in the region subscribed to Estonian bonds. We are unable to offer the indicated amount of bonds to professional investors because, as we promised earlier, we prefer Estonian retail investors," said Janno Luurmees, head of the state treasury department of the Ministry of Finance. "While we are offering bonds to professional investors for the umpteenth time, this is the first time we are selling bonds to retail investors – a milestone in the creation of a low-risk financial instrument."

The average amount subscribed by retail investors was €3,973, which Luurmees said was a "quite decent" amount.

At the same time, 3,350 small investors, or 46 percent, subscribed to bonds worth less than €1,000. Several hundred investors subscribed to a single €100 bond, Luurmees noted, which, in his view, indicates that a significant number of small investors participated in the offering.

"The share of private investors was as expected and those who were not able to subscribe to the bonds in the offer will be able to buy them on the Tallinn Stock Exchange in the future," said Luurmees.

Mihkel Torim, head of LHV's investment banking, said that it was one of Estonia's biggest issues in recent years and its attractiveness was confirmed by the "strong oversubscription."

Swedbank's head of capital markets Allan Marnot said a low-risk instrument is now available on the Estonian capital market, which was not available before.

"There was a lot of interest in the issue throughout the Baltics and further afield, for example in Germany. The quadrupling of the oversubscription will ensure demand in the secondary market for the bonds, providing additional certainty for retail investors who acquired bonds from the issue," he said. "The issue showed that Estonians are active investors and that financial education and awareness of the importance of investing is on the rise in Estonia. In terms of population, Estonia has more investors in government bonds than Slovenia, where 9,427 investors subscribed to three-year bonds."

Trading in Estonian bonds on the Tallinn Stock Exchange will start around September 17.

The bonds will mature on September 16, 2026, at which time the Republic of Estonia will repay the bondholders the principal amount corresponding to the bond's original nominal value.

The bonds will also yield a fixed annual interest rate of 3.3 percent, with payments made once a year.

This article was updated to add additional quotes from Janno Luurmees.

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