Treasury awards P25B in bonds

The Bureau of the Treasury yesterday fully awarded P25 billion in re-issued treasury bonds at a lower yield during its last auction for the first quarter.

The Treasury said the IOUs, which have a remaining life of three years and seven months, were all sold to investors “on the back of strong demand for the security.”

The average rate of 3.25 percent “fell below secondary market levels with healthy participation from competitive and noncompetitive bidders,” the Treasury noted.

The bonds maturing on Nov. 22, 2019, fetched a total of P76.84 billion in tenders or more than three times the offering.

Next week, the Treasury will auction off P20 billion in treasury bills—P8-billion benchmark 91-day debt paper, P6-billion 182-day IOUs and P6-billion 364-day securities.

The Treasury plans to sell P135 billion in government securities—P60 billion in bills and P75 billion in bonds—during the second quarter, the same volume as the first-quarter program.

The latest Treasury data showed that the total amount of outstanding government-issued debt paper rose to P3.85 trillion as of February from P3.82 trillion the month before.

This year, the government plans to borrow P674.8 billion in order to slash the debt stock or the share of outstanding debt to the gross domestic product to a record low of 41.8 percent.

Domestic borrowing would make up 85 percent of the total or P570.2 billion. The government will also borrow P104.6 billion from foreign sources: P54.1-billion program loans, P17.1-billion project loans and P33.4-billion bonds and other inflows. Ben O. de Vera