Treasury fully awards all tenors in T-bills auction

THE Bureau of the Treasury (BTr) has fully awarded all tenors in its latest auction for Treasury bills (T-bills) totaling P20 billion on the back of low rates for the government security.

National Treasurer Rosalia V. de Leon told financial reporters that the auction committee decided to award all T-bills on Monday seeing that rates coming from investors were on the lower end of the curve, which was seen to be fueled by the earlier announcement of Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) Governor Benjamin E. Diokno that there is room for monetary easing.

“Rates went down by almost four basis points because of what they heard from the [BSP] governor,” de Leon said. “Given the [path] also of inflation, the 3.8 percent [for February] and expectations that it would continue to trend downward, [we] would be looking at a range of about 3.1 percent for inflation.”

The 90-day tenor was awarded the full P6 billion on offer with bids amounting to P6.745 billion.

The average annual rate for the security settled at 5.716 percent, lower by 1.70 basis points from the 5.733 percent set during the previous auction.

The 182-day tenor was also fully awarded P6 billion as bids for the security reached P11.945 billion.

The average annual rate settled at 5.936 percent, which also posted a drop of 3.90 basis points from the 5.975 percent recorded in the last auction.

Bids for the 364-day tenor amounted to P13.081 billion, prompting the auction committee to award the full P8 billion on offer.

Its average annual rate of 6.018 percent posted a dip of 3.40 basis points from the last auction’s 6.052 percent.

The T-bills auction was able to attract P31.8 billion in tenders coming from an offering of P20 billion.

In his first news conference last week, Diokno said he sees a downward path for inflation. Inflation eased to 3.8 percent in February from 4.4 percent in the first month of the year.

The Monetary Board is expected to meet on March 21—Diokno’s first—and may discuss its policy stance on this development.

Meanwhile, de Leon said the Philippines is looking to issue panda bonds in April as part of its funding exercise for the year. Rea Cu