T-Bills Market Trades Bullish as CBN Raises N253b from PMA

By Modupe Gbadeyanka

The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) on yesterday raised the sum of N252.8 billion from the sale of treasury bills at the primary market.

The exercise was largely embraced by investors as the bills offered for sale recorded fair oversubscriptions.

However, Business Post reports that the stop rates slightly went down from the last exercise conducted about two weeks ago.

The results showed that the central bank sold N6.01 billion worth of the 91-day bill at 12 percent, N69.57 billion worth of the 182-day instrument at 13.65 percent, and N177.22 billion worth of the 364-day bill at 13.70 percent.

Our correspondent reports that generally, the T-bills market on Wednesday traded bullish with strong decline in yields observed on the short end of the curve maturities.

This was due to buoyant system liquidity and expectations of further inflows from the Open Market Operations (OMO).

Today, the market is expected to remain slightly bullish though with slight pullback expected on the short end in favour of OMO.

Meanwhile, the overnight rate slightly decline yesterday, while the open buy back (OBB) rate remained unchanged.

While the overnight rate dropped to 5.25 percent from 5.58 percent on Tuesday, the OBB rate closed at 4.83 percent.