SINGAPORE, Aug 28 (Reuters) - First Ship Lease Trust is sticking to plans to buy $200 million of shipping assets in the next 12 months, despite the turmoil in debt markets, its chief executive Philip Clausius said on Tuesday.

He said the trust, which acquires ships and leases them out for five years or more, will maintain its forecast distribution per unit of 2.22 U.S. cents a quarter for 2008.

"I am very confident we will do $200 million based on the pipeline and transactions we are working on," Clausius said, adding the acquisitions will help boost yields.

Clausius said First Ship would not have funding problems as it has a US$250 million seven-year revolving credit facility, from which US$45 million has been used.

"That facility will be drawn in full," he said.

The cost of swapping borrowings from this facility -- which carries an interest rate of one percentage point above the London interbank offered rate -- to a fixed-rate loan is around 5.2-5.4 percent per annum, Clausius said. At the time of its initial public offering in March, the cost was around 5.6 percent.

"What is interesting to observe is that while short-term rates have shown enormous volatility over the past few weeks, longer-term rates have stayed relatively stable," he said.

First Ship, which was the second shipping trust to list in Singapore, owns 16 ships and has net assets of over $500 million. The trust offers investors a distribution yield of nearly 10 percent based on its last traded price of $0.865.

Shipping trusts tend to offer higher yields than property trusts because of ships typically have a lifespan of only 25-30 years. By contrast Singapore property trusts own assets than sit on land with leases of about 70 years remaining.

First Ship's shares have fallen over 12 percent from its IPO price of $0.98, versus a 3.5 percent gain in the benchmark Straits Times Index over the same period.

First Ship's biggest shareholders are Germany's HSH Nordbank , German bank HVB , a unit of Italy's UniCredit , and Schoeller Holdings, a Cyprus-based maritime holding firm.