MANILA, Philippines?Yields on treasury bills again dipped across the board as the government remains awash in cash due mainly to the issuance of Samurai bonds last month.

Interest on the benchmark 91-day T-bill went down by 5.8 basis points to an average of 3.863 percent.

National Treasurer Roberto B. Tan said Monday?s auction results reflected the ?confluence of buyers? expectations regarding the proceeds from the (yen bond float) and an outlook that is more benign in terms of inflation expectations.?

?The market knows we have a lot of funds so the possibility of us accepting more aggressive bids (higher rates) is not likely,? Tan said.

He said that last week, the National Treasury received the funds from the 100-billion yen issue, equivalent to $1.1 billion in current exchange rates.

Before that, in January, the government raised $1.5 billion from the sale of global bonds, the fourth such outing in 13 months.

About P7.5 billion worth of T-bills are maturing this week.

For all three T-bill tenors, investors tendered a total of P37.254 billion or more than three times the total offer, which were awarded fully.

Interest on the 182-day bills also went down by three basis points while that for the 364-day issue eased by 6.2 basis points.

The six-month debt paper now costs the government an average of 4.092 percent while the year-long issue costs 4.428 percent.

For the 91-day T-bill, buyers tendered a total of P7.66 billion or almost four times the Bureau of the Treasury?s offer of P2 billion.

They also tendered P13.654 billion for the 182-day bill, which was more than four times the P3-billion offer.

Further, lenders pitched a total of P15.94 billion or more than four times the P3.5 billion worth of 364-day bills on offer.

Monday?s results were almost a mirror of the previous auction two weeks ago when rates decreased across the board and all tenors were oversubscribed.

The BTr plans to issue P110.5 billion in debt paper in the first quarter, two-thirds of which would be bonds.