By Dipo Olowookere
The treasury bills market traded bullish on Thursday as the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) resumed its regular its Open Market Operations (OMO) auction after two days off.
Yesterday, bills worth N309 billion matured at the market and this subsequently increased the net system liquidity to N244 billion.
At the end of the OMO auction yesterday, the central bank mopped up N245 billion from the system.
A breakdown of the exercise showed that N10.83 billion was raised from the 105-day, which cleared at 12.60 percent, while N234.50 billion was realized from the 189-day bill, which was sold at 14.40 percent stop rate.
However, Business Post gathered that the amount raised by the apex bank from the auction fell short of what was offered to traders.
The CBN had offered a total N350 billion OMO bills to investors with only N245 billion made from the exercise as earlier stated.
The short tenor bill recorded the least subscription.
The central bank had offered N100 billion worth of the 105-day bill, while N250 billion was earmarked for the 189-day instrument.
Meanwhile, the overnight lending rate depreciated on Thursday, closing at 8.25 percent from 14.57 percent in the previous session, while the open buy back (OBB) rate settled at 7.33 percent yesterday from 13.86 percent the previous day.
