T-bill rates climb ahead of BSP meet

The government upsized its sale of short-term securities yesterday to P17 billion, even after rates picked up ahead of the policy decision of the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) this week.

The Bureau of the Treasury yesterday fully awarded and even upsized its T-bills on offer from the P15 billion original target.

In particular, the Treasury upsized the 364-day tenor to P7 billion from the target P5 billion.

This after the one-year debt papers saw rates slightly go down weekon-week by 1.1 basis points to 6.064 percent from 6.075 percent.

In reference to the secondary market, the tenor’s yield moved upward by just 0.6 basis point.

“The auction was 3.3 times oversubscribed, attracting P49.3 billion in total tenders and prompting the committee to double the accepted non-competitive bids for the 364-day security,” the Treasury said.

On the other hand, rates for the 91-day paper increased by 4.5 basis points to 5.506 percent from the secondary and last auction’s rate, both at 5.461 percent.

Likewise, rates averaged 5.879 percent for the 182-day T-bills, 6.9 basis points higher than the secondary rate and also slightly up from the last auction rate of 5.861 percent.

Still, both the three and six-month securities were fully awarded at P5 billion.

Investors demanded higher rates ahead of the BSP policy meeting on Thursday.

The central back is expected to move in lockstep with the US Federal Reserve and keep rates unchanged for the third straight meeting.

For this month, the Treasury aims to borrow P210 billion from domestic creditors. Of this, P60 billion is expected to come from short-dated T-bills. It has so far raised P32 billion.