91-day Treasury bills slip to 4.276%

MANILA, Philippines – The average rate of the 91-day Treasury bill (T-bill) dipped slightly to 4.276 percent from the previous rate of 4.287 percent at yesterday’s T-bill auction as investors’ stayed on the sidelines awaiting the release of the April inflation rate.

The National Statistics Office (NSO) is scheduled to release the April inflation rate today.

The Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) expects inflation to range between 4.5 percent to 5.4 percent in April, slower than the inflation rate in March of 6.4 percent.

Out of total tenders of P2.625 billion for the 91-day T-bills, the government’s auction committee made an award of P1.5 billion.

The 182-day T- bill rose slightly to 4.456 percent, up 2.2 basis points from the previous rate of 4.434 percent.

For this tenor, total tenders reached P4.55 billion. The government’s auction committee awarded P2.5 billion worth of the paper.

The average rate of the 364-day T-bill meanwhile, also moved up slightly by 0.9 basis point to 4.629 percent from the previous rate of 4.620 percent.

Total tenders reached P3.460 billion as the government awarded P1.760 billion worth of the paper.

Finance Undersecretary Gil Beltran, a member of the government’s auction committee, said that the market is relatively calm because investors are still awaiting the NSO announcement of the actual inflation rate for April.

“It’s a very calm market. They expect lower inflation for April,” he told reporters after the auction.

He said that slowly the market is normalizing but it also means that there aren’t a lot of long-term investments coming in.

Yesterday’s auction is part of the government’s P104.5 billion borrowing program in the second quarter.

The government has programmed to borrow P104.5 billion from the local debt market in the second quarter of the year through the issuance of T- bills and T- bonds.

The programmed borrowing from April to June is P12.5 billion more than the P92 billion it programmed to borrow in the first quarter of this year.

Of the P104.5 billion, the government is set to issue P45 billion worth of 91-day, 182-day and 364-day T- bills and P59.5 billion worth of three-, five-, 10- and 20-year T-bonds.

The National Government hopes to contain the budget deficit at P199.2 billion this year, revised upward from a previous program of P177.2 billion. –Iris Gonzales, Philippine Star