CBN OMO Auction Suffers Setback as Investors Snub Exercise

By Dipo Olowookere

The sale of treasury bills by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) on Tuesday suffered a slight setback as investors did not fully participate in the exercise.

This came on the back of the preparedness of market players for the next day’s sale of the debt instrument via the primary market auction (PMA) by the apex bank.

The central bank is planning to roll over a total of N225 billion NTB maturities during the exercise.

At the OMO auction, the apex bank could only rake N22.51 billion from the N100 billion worth of the bills it auctioned, which came mostly from the one-year bills offered.

For instance, no offer was received from the N20 billion worth of the 100-day paper the CBN had intended to sell to investors.

A total of N30 billion of the 163-day notes were auctioned by the CBN with offers worth N51 million received and sold at the end of the exercise at 13.50 percent.

However, there were slight interests on the 317-day paper from investors, though below average. Of the N50 billion worth of the bill auctioned, it received N22 billion worth of subscriptions, which it allotted at 15.00 percent.

Meanwhile, the average money market rate depreciated yesterday by 10.54 percent to close at 22.92 percent.

This came on the back of the 10.00 percent and 11.08 percent drop in the Open Buy Back (OBB) and the Overnight (OVN) rates, closing at 21.67 percent and 24.17 percent respectively.

The rates are expected to remain at these levels as there are no significant inflows expected on Wednesday.