T-bill rates rise across the board

Rates for short-term securities picked up across the board, with the government raising just P10 billion from the sale of Treasury bills (T-bills).

The Bureau of the Treasury yesterday made a partial award of P10 billion in T-bills, short of the P15 billion target for its first offering for March.

This is the third week of partial award for T-bills as rates started to pick up again after temporarily easing at the start of the new year.

During yesterday’s auction, rates went up across the board for the three months, six months and one-year offerings.

“Results were mixed in today’s auction as the committee decided to fully award bids for the 182and 364-day T-bills while rejecting bids for the 91-day security,” the Treasury said.

Rates for the 91-day T-bills soared by 36.5 basis points to 4.864 percent, significantly higher than the secondary rate of 4.499 percent and above last week’s 4.413 percent.

The Treasury rejected all offers and failed to raise P5 billion for the tenor.

On the other hand, the 182-day short-dated debt papers saw rates increase by 3.5 basis points to 5.177 percent from the reference rate of 5.142 percent. This was higher as well from last auction’s 5.06 percent.

For the 364-day T-bills, rates averaged 5.577 percent, up by 13.1 basis points. Yields rose in comparison with secondary markets and from last week’s auction.

Still, the Treasury awarded P5 billion each for the six-month tenor and the one-year T-bills on offer.

However, overall demand for the short-term securities reached P22.65 billion, oversubscribing the auction by 1.5 times.

Demand dipped by 25 percent from the P30.318 billion in bids last week.

Bids also slipped across the board, declining to P4.12 billion, P9.46 billion and P9.07 billion for 91 days, 182 days and 364 days, respectively.

For the month of March, the Treasury targets to borrow P200 billion from the local debt market.

Of this, P75 billion is expected to be raised from short-term debt papers.