Treasury bills undersubscribed on tight liquidity

DAILY NEWS Reporter

TREASURY bills auctioned on Wednesday last week was characterized by low demand that finally resulted into under subscriptions of the short term government instrument.

Similarly, low appetite for the treasury bills is translated into continued tight liquidity stance in the circulation that contributed to poor performance of short and long term debt securities in the past two sessions.

According to NMB e-market report, liquidity remained tight following tax payment period, with overnight rates trading at about 15 per cent amidst fairly high demand for funds.

The auction summary by the Bank of Tanzania (BoT) shows that a total of 139bn/- was offered to the market for bidding and in the end it attracted bids worth 117.47bn/-, although the government retained 76.62bn/-as successful amount.

Yield rates across all tenures increased slightly at weighted average of 15.81 per cent compared to 15.71 per cent of the previous treasury bills session held two weeks ago. Likewise out of 142 number of bids received during the trading session, only 72 emerged to be successful.

Some of the investors in the one-year treasury bills are namely commercial banks, pension funds, insurance companies and some micro-finance institutions.

The two tenures, 364 and 182 days have continued to dominate the trading session and most attractive after contributing some 90 per cent of the total bids while 91 and 35 shared the remaining.

The 364 and 182 days offer attracted bids worth 61.71bn/- and 55.50bn/- respectively against 73bn/- and 50bn/- offered to the market for bidding while the 91 and 35 days offer attracted 100m/- and 160.4m/- all together.

Yield rates for the 364 and 182 days offer were 16 per cent and 15.73 per cent respectively compared to 15.88 per cent and 15.60 per cent of the previous session held two weeks ago. The 35 days tenure interest rate was 7.35 per cent.

The highest and lowest bid/100 for the 364 and 182 days offers were 86.61/84.00 and 93.03/91.66 respectively while for the 91 and 35 days offer were 96.70/96.70 and 99.30/99.30.

The minimum successful price/100 for the 364, 182, 91 and 35 days offer were 86.03, 92.21, 100.00 and 99.30 respectively.