The Bureau of the Treasury’s (BTr) treasury bills auction ended with mixed results as investors sought higher rates for the one-year IOUs, prompting the auction committee to issue a partial award for the said tenor.
The government was able to raise P13 billion of the P15 billion offering, as the BTr granted full awards for the 91-day and 182-day securities since the rates for these were lower than the previous auction and prevailing secondary market rates.
The auction was oversubscribed with total bids reaching P35.1 billion, more than twice the offering.
Rosalia de Leon, national treasurer, said there was a very healthy auction as offers from the dealers were more than the offer amount.
“We also saw that in terms of rates, they’re even lower than the current secondary, except for the one-year, that’s why we also made a partial award. We don’t want it to trend higher than the secondary market,” de Leon said.
“Given the two (other) tenors, they are going down following the pronouncements of BSP (Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas) governor Benjamin Diokno that there is also room for the Monetary Board to cut policy rates and also even the RRR (reserve requirement ratio),” she added.
“Of course after the attack on the oil fields of Saudi Arabia over the weekend, the governor also said that they will be monitoring developments and this event will be an input in their discussion during the policy meeting next week. In terms of the oil, there’s also pronouncement that Saudi Arabia is trying to see that the normal production will be restored,” de Leon also said.
The 91-day IOU fetched a rate of 3.037 percent, 11.2 basis points (bps) lower than the previous average of 3.149 percent.
Tenders amounted to P11.9 billion, nearly thrice oversubscribed, with a full award of P4 billion.
For the 182-day securities, the rate stood at 3.42 percent, 0.9 bps down from the previous 3.429 percent.
The government made a full award of P5 billion, with demand reaching P12.74 billion.
Lastly, the one-year paper fetched a yield of 3.666 percent under a partial award of P3.983 billion, 0.7 bps higher than the previous rate of 3.659 percent.
Tenders for the debt instrument totaled to P10.403 billion, higher than the P6 billion offering.
Under a full award, the rate would have been 3.7 percent, 4.1 bps up versus the previous average.
