Treasury partially awards T-bills due to rising rates

The Bureau of the Treasury partially awarded the bills offered yesterday amid rising yields.

In a statement, the Treasury said it rejected the bids for the P5 billion worth of 182-day paper “due to higher-than-expected rates.” The six-month debt notes were undersubscribed with P3.55 billion in tenders.

As for the benchmark 91-day treasury bills, only P4.13 billion were accepted out of the P6-billion offering even as tenders reached P9.16 billion.

The average rate for the three-month IOUs inched up to 2.189 percent from 2.126 percent in the previous auction.

For the 364-day bills, the Treasury accepted P3.61 billion out of the P5.93 billion in bids for the P4 billion it offered.

The annual rate of the one-year debt paper rose to 2.995 percent from 2.926 percent two weeks ago.

In all, the Treasury raised P7.7 billion out of the P15-billion total offering.

Investors tendered a total of P18.6 billion, almost half of which were for the 91-day government securities. —BEN O. DE VERA