Bellwether Treasury-bill rate declines to 3.400%

MANILA, Philippines – Rates for the bellwether 91-day Treasury bills (T-bills) went down by 17.5 basis points to 3.400 percent from 3.575 percent previously.

The 182-day T-bill, meanwhile, fetched an average rate of 3.941 percent, a slight uptick of 0.6 basis points from 3.935 percent previously.

The government sold P5.78 billion in Treasury bills during yesterday’s auction after the Bureau of the Treasury decided to do a partial award for the 364-day T-bill.

Deputy Treasurer Eduardo Mendiola said the auction panel had to temper the increase in the rate of the one-year paper.

The auction panel allowed the average rate of the 364-day T-bill to rise to 4.165 percent from 4.134 percent previously.

It accepted total bids of P2.280 billion out of total tenders of P6.4 billion.

“What we wanted was to temper the rates,” said Mendiola when asked why there was a partial rejection in the bids for the 364-day paper.

Mendiola believes that the market is correcting itself on the back of declining interest rates. “As far as I know, the market is correcting itself,” he said.

He does not believe that market investors are still concerned about the government’s budget deficit, saying that this has been priced in already.

As of end-September, the budget deficit has widened to P259.8 billion or 9.4 percent above the P237.5 billion recorded a year earlier.

Yesterday’s T-bill auction is part of the government’s program to borrow P75 billion from the local debt market in the fourth quarter of the year. The amount is lower than the third quarter borrowing program of P107.5 billion, according to the latest data from the Bureau of the Treasury (BTr).

Of the amount, the government plans to issue P35 billion worth of Treasury bills, P13 billion lower than the previous quarter’s P48 billion T-bill offering.

The Treasury, meanwhile, plans to sell P40 billion worth of Treasury bonds, also lower than the P59.5 billion programmed T-bond offering last quarter. –Iris C. Gonzales (The Philippine Star)