BTr rejects bids for 91-day T-bill

The government on Monday rejected all tenders for the 91-day treasury bill while results for the other two tenors were mixed although minimal.

The yield on the 182-day T-bill went up by 4.2 basis points to an average of 2.3 percent but those for the 364-day T-bill went down by 1.8 basis points to 2.5 percent.

National Treasurer Roberto B. Tan said in an interview that the submitted bids hinted of differing opinions among investors.

“I guess there’s no settled view on what rates on the 91-day bill should be,” Tan said. “Bids for the 182-day and 364-day bills were quite reasonable.”

He said investors, wary that their bids might be rejected given the rates they were asking, did not make available “more meaningful” amount of funds.

The treasurer was referring to the amount tendered for the benchmark bill, which equaled the government’s offer of P2 billion. The 91-day bill is usually oversubscribed by at least twice.

Had the government awarded its offer fully, the average benchmark rate would have gone up by 67.7 basis points to 2.851 percent.

That would have been 65.1 basis points higher than the corresponding 2.2 percent in the secondary market.

Also, Monday’s results for the six-month debt paper were 3.5 basis points higher than the corresponding 2.265 percent at the Philippine Dealing and Exchange Corp.

Results for the year-long paper were 25 basis points lower than the average rate in the secondary market.

Both the 182-day and 364-day bills were oversubscribed but tenders were less than twice the offer. Investors made available P3.33 billion for the P2-billion offer of six-month bills and P5.05 billion for the P3.5-billion offer for the yearlong bill.

Overall, buyers made available P10.38 billion for the three tenors, more than the total offer of P7.5 billion.