CBN Lowers Treasury Bills Rates at Primary Market

By Dipo Olowookere

The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) on Wednesday conducted the last Primary Market Auction (PMA) for the month of November.

During the exercise, the apex bank offered N150.6 billion worth of the debt instruments to investors in the usual three tenors.

A total of N22.73 billion worth of the 91-day bill, N24.80 billion worth of the 182-day note and N103.07 billion worth of the 364-day paper were auctioned to market players yesterday.

It was observed that all the bills were oversubscribed with offers valued at N272.05 billion received from interested investors. The apex bank eventually sold N150.6 billion worth of the treasury bills at the end of the auction.

However, the stop rates were lowered by the central bank for the 91-day and 182-day bills by 0.05 percent and 0.06 percent respectively, while the stop rate for the one-year was left unchanged.

The CBN, which received subscriptions worth N24.52 billion for the 91-day bill, alloted N24.37 billion of the paper at 10.90 percent.

For the 182-day note, N45.33 billion worth of subscriptions were received, with the apex bank selling N23.18 billion at 13.10 percent, while offers valued at N202.20 billion were received for the 12-month paper, with the central bank allotting N103.07 billion of the bill at 14.45 percent.

Business Post reports that Wednesday’s PMA left the secondary treasury bills market very mute because attention was mainly focused on the exercise.

“We expect the T-bills market to trade with bearish sentiments tomorrow, as the CBN is expected to float an OMO auction to counter maturing OMO bills,” Zedcrest Research said.

Meanwhile, despite the scarcity of liquidity in the money market, the Overnight (OVN) and Open Buy-Back (OBB) rates remained calm at 18.00 percent and 17.17 percent respectively as there was no significant outflow/inflow impacting the system.

The funding rates are expected to trend lower tomorrow as market players anticipate inflows from N443.76 billion maturing OMO bills.

The central bank is also expected to aggressively mop up excess liquidity with a second OMO auction this week.