91-day T-bill rate eases to 2.501%

HIGH DEMAND. Investors swamped Monday’s offers so that yield on the 91-day t-bills eased to an average 2.501 percent. (trademarks.ipophil.gov.ph)

Yield on the 91-day treasury bills eased to an average 2.501 percent as investors swamped Monday’s offers.

This was 37.9 basis points lower than the 2.88 percent set in the previous auction two weeks ago. Monday’s average was also 49.9 basis points lower than the corresponding rate for deals done in the secondary market, which averaged 3 percent.

The interest rate on the 182-day bills rose 31.5 basis points to an average 2.759 percent while those for the 364-day securities inched up 1.7 basis points to 3.236 percent.

The average for the six-month bill was 24.1 basis points lower than the prevailing average for deals at the Philippine Dealing and Exchange Corp., which was 3 percent. The average for the year-long bills was 11.1 basis points higher than the 3.125 percent in the secondary market.

The Bureau of Treasury awarded P3 billion in six-month bills and P4 billion in year-long bills, which were the full amount offered for each maturity.

National Treasurer Roberto B. Tan said the auction was “good” in that “meaningful volumes” of tenders were put forward.

Tan said the auction results also normalized the rates on the 182-day bills, which were previously higher than those for the 91-day bill.

As for the benchmark bill, he said the increased volume of tenders meant that some investors preferred to park their funds in short-term securities although there were still uncertainties in the domestic fixed-income market.

“There’s a lot of demand on the 91-day T-bills,” Tan said. “I guess some investors would like to place their money in more liquid instruments.”

On Monday, the government raised P9 billion as planned as investors tendered a total of P23.27 billion.

Offers for the three-month bills reached P8.56 billion, or more than four times the P2 billion offer. Bids for the six-month paper reached P7.5 billion, or two and a half times the P3 billion available. Tenders for the year-long bills totaled P7.21 billion, almost double the offer of P4 billion.