By Modupe Gbadeyanka

The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) continued with its sale of treasury bills through the Open Market Operations (OMO) yesterday with the sale of bills worth 66.021 billion.

However, it was observed that the market was slightly bearish as traders await outcome of the apex bank’s Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) meeting next week as well as the release of the country’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) for third quarter of 2017 next Monday by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS).

At the close of transactions on Friday, the central bank sold the 97-days bills worth N121 million and the 216-day bills worth N65.90 billion.

The rate of the 97-day bills was 16 percent, while for the 216-day bills was 17.80 percent.

Business Post reports that the average yields of treasury bills yesterday slightly increased by 9 basis points to 17.98 percent as some lenders make efforts to raise liquidity to fund for their retails forex bids.

Meanwhile, the overnight rate broadly increased on Friday to 27.67 percent from 6.67 percent on Thursday, while the Open Buy Back (OBB) rate rose to 26.67 percent from 6.17 percent the previous day.