By Dipo Olowookere
The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) on Thursday, November 30, 2017, did not sell treasury bills at the open market operations (OMO) auction despite conducting the exercise.
At the close of the auction yesterday, the central bank signalled the market with a ‘no sale’ result.
This was after it received subscriptions worth N2.08 billion for the 91-day bill and N59.72 billion for the 189-day bill.
Also, it was observed that the treasury bills market was pretty quiet as the average yields stayed flat at 17.78 percent.
This was majorly due to the slight sell observed on some short tenured maturities and some buys on some medium tenured bills.
This might slightly change next week when the market resumes from the public holiday declared by the Federal Government for today, Friday, December 1, 2017.
Meanwhile, the money market rates broadly rose at the close of transactions on Thursday.
The overnight rate jumped to 29.08 percent from 11.92 percent recorded on Wednesday, while the open buy back (OBB) rate increased to 25.83 percent from 11.17 percent.
This was mainly due to the retail SMIS by the CBN and the rates are expected to remain high next week when transactions resume.
