91-day T-bill rate rises to 1.416%

The Bureau of the Treasury made a full award Monday of short-term debt paper totaling P20 billion even as rates rose across the board.

During the auction, P8 billion worth of 91-day treasury bills were sold at 1.416 percent, up 11.8 basis points from 1.298 percent last month. The three-month IOUs attracted P10.92 billion in bids from investors.

For the P6-billion, 182-day securities, the rate went up 11.7 basis points to 1.771 percent from 1.654 previously. Investors tendered P12.66 billion for the six-month debt paper.

The 364-day IOUs, meanwhile, were auctioned off at 1.836 percent, 6.8-basis points higher than the previous auction’s 1.768 percent. The one-year treasury bills worth P6 billion were oversubscribed as P12.4 billion in bids were tendered.

National Treasurer Rosalia V. de Leon told reporters after the auction that the treasury bill rates remained lower than those in the secondary market.

De Leon pointed out that there had been a “significant drop” in average rates from secondaries as inflation expectations were being tempered by stable prices of basic goods, lower power rates as well as cheaper global oil prices.

On the concern on port congestion, which has pushed up commodity prices, De Leon noted that the government was already moving to address this problem.

Investors were also banking on Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas Governor Amando M. Tetangco Jr.’s earlier pronouncement that interest rates might be kept unchanged in the next Monetary Board meeting as the current policy stance was supportive of the economic activity, De Leon added.

Before this year ends, the Treasury will again auction long-term treasury bonds to “take advantage of the liquidity,” the national treasurer said.

As for the potential offshore bond issuance as programmed for 2015, De Leon said the Treasury might choose to issue debt paper with long tenors, benchmarked between $750 million and $1 billion.

“We’ll always go for the long [tenors]… There’s appetite on the long end of the curve,” she said. Ben O. de Vera