BTr eyes $200M from dollar RTBs

MANILA  -The Bureau of the Treasury (BTr) plans to raise at least $200 million from the issuance of the government’s second US dollar-denominated retail Treasury bonds—or Retail Dollar Bonds (RDB) 2.Meanwhile, the average yield on Treasury bills (T-bills) increased across the board as lenders’ appetite waned.

In a notice of offering, the BTr said the Retail Dollar Bonds 2 to be offered from Sept. 27 to Oct. 6 would mature in 5.5 years and would be available to investors at a minimum transaction of $200.

Finance Secretary Benjamin Diokno earlier said the national government was looking at raising at least $1 billion from the RDB 2 issuance.

The Philippines’ maiden RBD, issued in 2021, raised a total of about $1.6 billion.

At yesterday’s T-bills auction, the government again raised P15 billion as planned with the full-award of the debt paper.

The average rate on the benchmark 91-day Treasury bills rose by 4.3 basis points (bps) to 5.595 percent from 5.552 percent in the previous weekly auction.

Further, the average yield on the 182-day T-bills went up by 2.9 bps to 5.968 percent from 5.939 percent.
Also, the average rate on the 364-day T-bills increased by 4.6 bps to 6.119 percent from 6.073 percent.

“The auction was 2.7 times oversubscribed, attracting P40.2 billion in total tenders,” the Bureau of the Treasury said in a statement. Last week, lenders made available a total of P55.7 billion in total tenders for the T-bills.

At the Bloomberg Valuation Service, the yield on the three month bill was 1.5 bps higher at 5.61 percent.

The yield on the six-month bill was 2.6 bps higher at 5.994 percent, but that for the 12-month bill was 2.3 bps lower at 6.096 percent.

Michael Ricafort, chief economist at the Rizal Commercial Banking Corp., said auction yields corrected slightly higher week-on-week after more hawkish signals from Philippine monetary authorities about a possible local policy rate hike in November.

The Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas Gov. Eli Remolona said this last week, adding that a possible hike in November might not be the last one in the current monetary policy tightening cycle. INQ