By Dipo Olowookere
The journey of the stop rates of treasury bills in Nigeria to the zero levels inched closer on Wednesday, November 11, 2020, when the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) auctioned some of the government’s debt securities to investors.
The investment tool was offered for sale by the apex bank on behalf of the Debt Management Office (DMO) through the primary market auction (PMA).
However, the strong appetite for the T-bills gave the central bank the confidence to further slice the stop rates deeper to as low as 0.04 per cent.
Like in the previous exercises, the CBN auctioned the treasury bills across three maturities; N19.8 billion worth of the 91-day bill, N40.1 billion worth of the 182-day bill and N107.9 billion worth of the 364-day bill, totalling N167.8 billion.
However, when the subscriptions were analysed by Business Post, subscribers bid N99.9 billion for the three-month instrument, N92.2 billion was stake on the six-month instrument and N411.1 billion was stake on the 12-month instrument, amounting to N603.2 billion.
When the central bank made the allotment, it sold N19.8 billion for the short-term T-bills, it allotted N10.0 billion for the mid-term T-bills and sold N138.0 billion for the long-term T-bills.
For the stop rates, the apex bank trimmed the 91-day bill to 0.04 per cent from 0.34 per cent, the 182-day bill to 0.15 per cent from 0.50 per cent, while the 364-day bill was lowered to 0.30 per cent from 0.98 per cent.
From observation, the next exercise will likely have the rates touching the zero levels as long as the demand for the treasury bills continues to rise.
