4-year T-bond rate at 5.213%

MANILA, Philippines—Yield on the four-year treasury bonds on Tuesday averaged 5.213 percent, 15.2 basis points lower than the 5.375 percent for done deals in the secondary market.

Tuesday’s average was also 84.3 basis points lower than the 6.056 percent for the most recent four-year issue that was awarded in the primary market in March 2009.

Investors tendered a total of P35.68 billion, or almost four times the volume on offer. The Bureau of the Treasury raised P9 billion as planned from Tuesday’s issue.

Tuesday’s offer was a reissue of five-year bonds that were first issued in May 2010, which means that the bonds have three years and 11 months left until maturity.

National Treasurer Roberto B. Tan said Tuesday’s results showed “very good” market sentiment considering yet another confluence of positive news.

Tan was mainly referring to reports that the government posted a P26.3-billion budget surplus in April, the highest recorded in the past 25 years.

Also, the National Statistics Office earlier this month announced that the rise in consumer prices inched to a 12-month high of 4.5 percent year on
year in April mainly due to faster spikes in most commodity groups.

The latest inflation figure was the same as that recorded in April 2010 and put the average for the first four months of 2011 at 4.2 percent.