By Modupe Gbadeyanka
The banking industry watchdog, Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), has announced plans to auction treasury bills valued at N847.4 billion to investors in the first quarter of 2020.
The apex bank, in a circular released on Wednesday, stated that the debt instrument would be offered in the usual three maturities; 91-day, 182-day and 364-day bills.
The sale would be done via the primary market auction (PMA) and would be open to both local and offshore investors. It further said the same amount of the T-bills would be maturing in the period under review.
Some weeks ago, the nation’s banking industry regulator announced in a circular to banks that it was restricting the sale of its OMO bills only to foreign investors. This move was seen to make funds available to the real sector of the economy through loans.
In the calendar obtained by Business Post, the CBN said the exercise, which would be done in seven different auctions during the period under review, would have one unit of the bill sold at N1,000 subject to change at short notice.
From the analysis, the central bank it would issue N75.6 billion worth of the 91-day bill, N141.0 billion worth of the 182-day bill and N630.8 billion worth of the 364-day bill.
However, in the first three months of next year, N86.6 billion worth of the 91-day instrument would be maturing, N163.0 billion worth of the 182-day instrument would mature, while N597.8 billion of the 364-day bill is expected to mature.
For the first exercise to be conducted next Wednesday, the apex bank hopes to sell N5 billion of the 91-day bill, N10 billion of the 182-day bill and N30 billion worth of the 364-day bill, while a week later, it would sell N2 billion of the 91-day bill, another N2 billion of the 182-day bill and N3 billion of the 364-day bill.
In recent times, stop rates of treasury bills sold by the CBN have fallen to single digit unlike the OMO bills, which are still offered at double digits so as to attract foreign investors to keep their funds in the system.
See the calendar below
