Outstanding Treasury debt issue swells to P5.95T

While the government continued to borrow more locally by selling treasury bills and bonds, the amount of outstanding IOUs issued by the Bureau of the Treasury further rose to a record P5.95 trillion in July.

The latest Treasury showed that the face amount of outstanding treasury bonds climbed to P5.12 trillion last month from P5.09 trillion in June.

Outstanding short-dated treasury bills as of end-July amounted to P833.4 billion, up from P796.6 billion a month ago.

For 2020, the government will borrow a record P4 trillion to finance the budget as well as the rising costs for COVID-19 response.

Finance Secretary Carlos Dominguez III had said that three-fourths of annual borrowings would come from domestic sources.

Among the outstanding treasury bills, P15 billion were from the auction of the 35-day, P142 billion from the benchmark 91-day, P201.9 billion from 182-day and P474.6 billion from 364-day securities.

For outstanding bonds, three-year debt paper had a face amount of P153.5 billion; five-year IOUs, P426.5 billion; seven-year securities, P594.8 billion; and 10-year treasury bonds, P563.3 billion.

The outstanding amount for 10-year agrarian reform bonds was P8.4 billion; 20-year IOUs, P420.3 billion; and 25-year debt paper, P235.9 billion.

As for the $6.58-million Philippine Par Bonds redenominated into 28.5 years, the outstanding amount was P97.1 million.

Also outstanding were P1.7 trillion in retail treasury bonds, P939.3-billion benchmark bonds, P50 billion in 25-year CB-BoL bonds, P24.6-billion onshore dollar bonds, and P4.9 billion in “premyo” bonds.

On Tuesday, the Treasury sold all P30 billion in the reissued 10-year bonds it offered as investors remained awash with cash.

Tenders for the debt paper maturing in 2030 reached P54.7 billion, making the auction more than 1.8 times oversubscribed.

The annual rate for the IOUs declined to an average of 2.724 percent from the coupon rate of 2.875 percent when these bonds were first sold in July.

National Treasurer Rosalia de Leon partly attributed the robust demand for these treasury bonds to “very deep liquidity.”