By Dipo Olowookere
The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) on Wednesday carried out another sale of treasury bills via Open Market Operations (OMO).
During the mopping up of excess liquidity in the financial system, the apex bank took about N64.8 billion from investors, who subscribed to the exercise.
The exercise was largely undersubscribed with T-bills worth N150 billion for auctioned for sale in three maturities.
Only the longer end of the curve received a considerable value of subscriptions from market players during the exercise.
Of the N20 billion 92-day bill offered for sale, subscriptions worth N1.61 billion were received and allotted.
Of the N30 billion 176-day bill, only N13.18 billion offers were received and allotted, while of the N100 billion 330-day bill auctioned, the apex bank received and allotted N49.98 billion.
However, the stop rates across the three tenors were left at the previous level; 11.90 percent for the 92-day bill, 13.50 percent for the 176-day bill and 15.00 percent for the 330-day bill.
At the close of business yesterday, the market finished bullish, with yields compressing further following continued interests by market players around the short and mid tenors.
T-bills yields are expected to remain relatively stable, with slight pressures expected on the longer end of the curve as the CBN is expected to float a sizeable OMO auction to mop up N383 billion OMO maturities today.
Meanwhile, money market rates moderated slightly by 2 percent on the back of the slightly improved system liquidity levels currently estimated at N30 billion positive.
With inflows from OMO maturities expected to further bolster system liquidity levels today, rates should further drop.
