Neutral stance prompts full award on T-bills

Lack of uncertainty over the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas’ (BSP) policy horizon contributed to the oversubscription of the Bureau of Treasury’s (BTr) Treasury bills (T-bills) on Monday.

As such, the BTr decided to award its T-bills in full despite a slight increase on the 182- and 364-day tenors.

National Treasurer Rosalia de Leon said the increment on the T-bills can be traced to the market’s view that the BSP will continue to hold out on its neutral stance for the rest of the year.

“Full award for all tenors as rates for 182- and 364-day slightly pushed up with expectations (that) BSP will keep policy rates steady for the remainder of the year,” De Leon said.

“Demand remains strong with oversubscription in all tenor buckets,” she added.

Rates for the 91- and 182-day benchmarks fetched an average of 1.156 and 1.615 percent respectively, a 0.6 and 2.6 basis point increase from the posted 1.150 and 1.589 percent week-ago.

Demand remains strong with oversubscription in all tenor buckets.

Yield for the 364-day IOU stood at 1.850 percent, which is 11.9 basis point improvement from the fully rejected 1.969 percent last week.

The BTr was able to raise its full P20 billion offer after attracting P72.8 billion worth of tenders, oversubscribing the original amount by more than 3.6 times.

The Treasury chief noted that they are currently monitoring market developments in terms of their foreign issuances for the rest of the year.