By The Financial District
Apr 23, 20232 min
Results were mixed at the short-term securities auction on March 13, with the government borrowing about 85% of its programmed Treasury bills (T-bills).
Photo Insert: The Bureau of the Treasury (BTR) made a partial award of P12.837 billion in T-bills, short of the P15-billion target.
The Bureau of the Treasury (BTR) made a partial award of P12.837 billion in T-bills, short of the P15-billion target.
This was the fifth week of partial award for T-bills but with the amount raised slightly higher this time around after a month of continued reduction. The Treasury has been partially awarding T-bills as investors demand higher rates in anticipation of another 25- to 50-basis-point increase in the local policy rate by the central bank during next week’s policy meeting.
Inflation slightly eased to 8.6% in February. However, the headline rate is not expected to return to the target band until toward end-2023. During the auction, rates for the 91-day T-bills went down by 4.7 basis points to 4.664% from the secondary rate of 4.711% but above the previous week’s 4.586%.
On the other hand, the 182-day short-dated debt papers saw rates pick up by 10.7 basis points to 5.437% from the reference rate of 5.33%. This was higher as well than the last auction’s 5.378%.
The Treasury just accepted P3.781 billion and P4.056 billion for the 91-day and 182-day, respectively. For the 364-day T-bills, rates averaged 5.717%, almost the same as the secondary rate but a bit higher from last week’s auction. The Treasury awarded P5 billion for the one-year T-bills on offer.
Overall demand for short-term securities reached P21.629 billion, up by seven percent from last week’s P20.129 billion. The auction was oversubscribed by 1.44 times. Such a demand was a slight improvement after six weeks of straight declines.
Bids went up to P6.091 billion and P7.816 billion for three and six months, respectively, but declined to P7.722 for the one-year tenor.
For this month, the Treasury has set a P200-billion local borrowing program. Of that, P75 billion is expected to be raised from short-term debt papers. The Treasury has so far raised P32.547 billion.