Treasury rejects bids for 91-day T-bills

The Bureau of the Treasury on Monday raised only P12 billion out of its P20-billion treasury bills offering, as it rejected bids for the 91-day debt paper amid higher bid rates.

While the Treasury declined tenders for the P8 billion it offered for the benchmark government securities, it awarded P6 billion each in 182- and 364-day IOUs.

National Treasurer Rosalia V. de Leon told reporters after the auction that there was “no reason to accept” bids for the 91-day treasury bills as most investors were willing to pay at a price higher than the previous auction’s rate of 2.995 percent as well as secondary market rates.

As for the 182-day securities, the average rate inched up by only 0.3 basis point to 3.174 percent or just moved sideways, de Leon said.

The 3.576-percent annual rate for the 364-day T-bills, meanwhile, was marginally lower by 0.1 bp compared to the previous auction.

Monday’s auction attracted a total of P59.8 billion in tenders across the three tenors or nearly thrice oversubscribed.

“There’s really now a move going to longer term” debt, de Leon said.

Also, de Leon said the market was being flushed with liquidity given Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) Governor Benjamin E. Diokno’s recent pronouncement of another possible cut in banks’ reserve requirement ratio (RRR) before yearend after the already announced scheduled reduction in November.