CBO issues treasury bills worth $181.8mln

PHOTO

Muscat: The Central Bank of Oman (CBO) raised OMR70 million by way of allotting treasury bills on Monday.

The value of the allotted treasury bills amounted to OMR5 million, for a maturity period of 28 days. The average accepted price reached OMR99.615 for every OMR100, and the minimum accepted price arrived at OMR99.615 per OMR100. The average discount rate and the average yield reached 5.01875 00 per cent and 5.03815 00 per cent, respectively.

Whereas, the value of the allotted treasury bills amounted to OMR28.6 million, for a maturity period of 91 days. The average accepted price reached OMR98.734 for every OMR100, and the minimum accepted price arrived at OMR98.705 per OMR100. The average discount rate and the average yield reached 5.07643 00 per cent and 5.14151 00 per cent, respectively.

While, the value of the allotted treasury bills amounted to OMR36.4 million, for a maturity period of 182 days. The average accepted price reached OMR97.446 for every OMR100, and the minimum accepted price arrived at OMR97.430 per OMR100. The average discount rate and the average yield reached 5.12217 00 per cent and 5.25643 00 per cent, respectively.

Treasury bills are short-term highly secured financial instruments issued by the Ministry of Finance, and they provide licensed commercial banks the opportunity to invest their surplus funds. The Central Bank of Oman (CBO) acts as the Issue Manager and provides the added advantage of ready liquidity through discounting and repurchase facilities (Repo).

It may be noted that the interest rate on the Repo operations with CBO is 6.00 per cent while the discount rate on the Treasury Bills Discounting Facility with CBO is 6.50 00 per cent.

Furthermore, treasury bills promote the local money market by creating a benchmark yield curve for short-term interest rates. Additionally, the government may also resort to this instrument whenever felt necessary for financing its recurrent expenditures.