Oman raises OMR70m from treasury bills

Muscat: The Sultanate’s central bank raised OMR70 million by allotting treasury bills.
The treasury bills were for a maturity period of 91 days, from August 2 until November 1,
2017. The average accepted price reached 99.710 for every OMR100 while the minimum accepted price arrived at 99.705 per OMR100. The average discount rate and the average yield reached 1.16175 per cent and 1.16513 per cent respectively.
The interest rate on the Repo operations with CBO is 1.732 per cent for the period from August 1 and August 7 while the discount rate on the Treasury Bills Discounting Facility with CBO is 2.482 per cent for the same period.
The Treasury Bills are short-term highly secured financial instruments issued by the CBO on behalf of the Government, which helps the licensed commercial banks to gainfully invest their surplus funds, with added advantage of ready liquidity through discounting and repurchase facilities (Repo) offered by the Central Bank. Furthermore, Treasury Bills promote the local money market by creating a benchmark yield curve for short-term interest rates. Additionally, the Government (MOF) may also resort to this instrument whenever felt necessary for financing its recurrent expenditures.