T-Bills Market Bearish as CBN Rakes N349b from OMO Auction

By Modupe Gbadeyanka

On Thursday, the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) conducted another sale of treasury bills via Open Market Operations (OMO).

This was to soak up excess inflows from maturing OMO bills yesterday.

At the close of the exercise, the apex bank raised about N349 billion from investors, who subscribed to the N400 billion worth of OMO bills offered by the bank.

A breakdown of the exercise showed that the central bank raised N73.65 billion from the 91-day bill offered at 11.05 percent, while N274.98 billion was raked from the 210-day paper offered at 12.15 percent.

According to Zedcrest Research, secondary market yields consequently inched higher by about 0.03 percent, following slight sell mostly on the 30-Aug and 31-Jan maturities.

The yields are expected to remain relatively stable today as system liquidity remains relatively buoyant at N280 billion, following the net inflows from yesterday’s OMO maturity.

At the money market, the Open Buy Back (OBB) and Overnight (OVN) rates slightly depreciated yesterday.

While the OBB rate dropped to 7.33 percent from 7.07 percent, the Overnight rate declined to 7.92 percent from 8.21 percent the previous day.

Rates are expected to close the week at these levels as there are no significant outflows expected, with exception however of about N67 billion bond auction debits, which should be largely offset by about N50 billion bond coupon payments on the Jan-2022 maturity.