T-bills upsized to P17 billion on lower rates

MANILA, Philippines — The government upsized its short-term securities to P17 billion as rates slipped across the board ahead of the inflation data release later this week.

The Bureau of the Treasury yesterday fully awarded and even upsized to P17 billion, its first T-bills offer for April, from the P15 billion original target.

It increased the 364-day offer to P7 billion from the target P5 billion.

This after the 364-day short-dated debt papers saw rates drop by 10.9 basis points to 5.965 percent in reference to the secondary market’s 6.074 percent.

Week-on-week, the tenor’s yield also moved downward by 1.7 basis points from the previous auction’s 5.982 percent.

On the other hand, rates for the 91-day offer decreased by 2.1 basis points to 5.704 percent from the secondary rate of 5.725 percent and last week’s 5.71 percent.

Likewise, rates averaged 5.865 percent for the 182-day T-bills, 5.3 basis points lower than the secondary rate and also down from the last auction rate of 5.88 percent.

Both the three and six-month securities were fully awarded at P5 billion.

Investors are awaiting for the March inflation print slated for release on April 5.

Inflation is expected to have quickened to 3.9 percent last month from the 3.4 percent print in February.

If realized, this would almost hit the upper end of the two to four percent target of the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas.

Meanwhile, T-bill demand slid by five percent to P47.75 billion. The auction was oversubscribed by 3.18 times.

Bids went down to P12.928 billion and P18.562 billion for the three-month and one-year T-bills, respectively, but inched up to P16.26 billion for the six-month offer.

For this month, the Treasury aims to borrow P195 billion from domestic creditors. Of this, P75 billion is expected to come from short-dated T-bills.