Weak peso pushes T-bill rates up; government bags ₧15 billion

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ALL tenors of Treasury Bills (T-bills) fetched higher rates on Monday as the Philippine peso already breached the P50-level mark against the greenback.

Despite this, the Bureau of the Treasury fully awarded P15 billion in T-bills during the auction.

Total bids for debt papers hit P42.1 billion, making the auction nearly thrice oversubscribed.

While the T-bills recorded higher average rates compared with the previous auction, these are all below the secondary market levels.

National Treasurer Rosalia V. De Leon said “rates moved slightly higher as peso breached 50/1$ mark.”

On Friday, the peso closed at P50.08 per dollar, its weakest performance in more than a year or since June 23, 2020 when it finished at P50.19.

The 91-day T-bills’ average rate stood at 1.068 percent, inching up by 2.4 basis points from 1.044 percent in the previous auction. The debt paper attracted total bids amounting to P14.7 billion, nearly thrice the P5-billion offer.

Meanwhile, the 182-day T-bills’ average rate rose by 3.3 basis points to reach 1.384 percent from 1.351 percent previously. Tenders for the security reached P14.8 billion, also thrice the P5-billion program.

Lastly, the 364-day T-bills had an average rate of 1.593 percent, 2.5 basis points above the previous auction rate of 1.568 percent. Bids for the tenor capped at P12.59 billion, three times the equivalent of  P5-billion offer.

For July, the Treasury has set to borrow P235 billion from the local debt market, slightly bigger than the P215 billion it programmed in June.

The national government programmed to borrow a total of P3.1-trillion, of which around 75 percent is expected to be raised through domestic sources.

Outstanding debt of the national government as of end-May this year has already ballooned to a record P11.07 trillion, up by 13 percent from P9.795 trillion as of end-2020.

Image courtesy of (c) Aldarinho | Dreamstime.com

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