By Dipo Olowookere
Selling pressure reign on the secondary market for treasury bills on Thursday, with the corresponding yields increasing slightly by 0.06 percent to settle at 15.04 percent.
Business Post reports that three of the five tenors recorded advancement today; one-month rose by 0.39 percent to end at 15.33 percent, 90month by 0.16 to finish at 16.70 percent and 12-mont by 0.06 percent to close at 17.35 percent.
However, yields on the 3-month and 6-month instruments depreciated by 0.16 percent to end at 12.47 percent and 0.15 percent to settle at 13.37 percent respectively.
The market is expected to remain bearish on Friday as investors provide funding for a retail foreign exchange intervention sale by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN).
Meanwhile, at the close of trades today, the average money market rate depreciated by 4.38 percent to settle at 14.50 percent.
The drop in the market rates came on the back of declines in the Open Buy Back (OBB) and the Overnight (OVN) rates respectively by 4.25 percent and 4.50 percent.
During the trading session, the market welcomed inflows from net OMO and PMA repayments of N265 billion, which bolstered system liquidity to N385 billion from N120 billion opening the day.
“Rates are expected to trend higher tomorrow, as the CBN is expected to debit banks for a retail FX interventions sale which estimated to mop up most of the available system liquidity,” analysts at Zedcrest Research said.
Adedapo Adesanya