By Dipo Olowookere
The one-year treasury bills were sold to investors at the primary market by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) on Wednesday at 7.30 per cent, Business Post reports.
At the preceding exercise, the stop rate of the tenor of the investment tool was given to market participants at 7.20 per cent, indicating that the apex bank raised the rate yesterday by 0.30 per cent to still make it attractive after it observed a slight decline in appetite.
Details of the PMA showed that N106.4 billion worth of the 364-day bill was taken to the market for auction but the central bank received bids valued at N166.3 billion, with the range of the bid rates between 6.80 per cent and 9.10 per cent.
Business Post observed that the bid rates range was still below the current inflation rate in Nigeria, which the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) said was 17.01 per cent in August 2021.
At the close of the exercise, the CBN allotted N108.7 billion to investors, higher than what it initially intended to sell but lower than the amount of offers it received from market participants.
However, the stop rates for the two other maturities; 91-day and 182-day, were left unchanged on Wednesday.
The apex bank sold N4.6 billion worth of the three-month instrument at 2.50 per cent and allotted N2.1 billion worth of the six-month bill at 3.50 per cent.
When the exercise commenced, N2.3 billion worth of the short-term financial asset was auctioned to the market but the offers received were quite high, N5.5 billion with bid rates ranging from 2.48 per cent to 5.25 per cent, while for the mid-term asset, the bank offered for sale N3.2 billion but got bids valued at N3.0 billion with the rates from 3.50 per cent to 6.75 per cent.
This showed that the demand for the 182-day maturity remains low, apparently as a result of the relatively low yield when compared with the short and long-term T-bills.
From the analysis, the CBN took treasury bills valued at N111.9 billion to the market for sale but it got subscriptions worth N174.8 billion and allotted N115.4 billion.
