Treasury Bills Market Remains Bullish as CBN Drains N215b

By Dipo Olowookere

The treasury bills market remained bullish on Thursday as the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) continued with its liquidity mop-up operations.

This was done by the apex bank through the sale T-bills worth N215.42 billion via the Open Market Operations (OMO) yesterday.

At the close of the exercise, the CBN raised N5 billion from 98-day bill at 12.60 percent stop rate, while it sold N210.42 billion from the 266-day bill at 14.40 percent.

With the funding for retail forex by banks expected to weigh on system liquidity, the treasury bills market is expected to be relatively quiet today.

Meanwhile, with the system liquidity estimated to close lower at N388 billion on Friday following the OMO sales by the CBN, the money market rates are expected to close slightly higher tomorrow as a result of funding for retail FX bids by banks.

But yesterday, the rates marginally went down.

The overnight rate crashed to 4.67 percent from 5.25 percent, while the Open Buy Back (OBB) rate declined to 3.83 percent from 4.83 percent.