CBO issues treasury bills worth OMR242.5mn

Muscat: The Central Bank of Oman (CBO) raised OMR242.5 million by way of allotting treasury bills on Tuesday.

The treasury bills are for a maturity period of 28 days, from March 23 until April 20, 2022.

The average accepted price reached 99.960 for every OMR100, and the minimum accepted price arrived at 99.960 per OMR 100. The average discount rate and the average yield reached 0.52143 per cent and 0.52164 per cent, respectively.

Treasury bills are short-term highly secured financial instruments issued by the Ministry of Finance, and they provide licensed commercial banks the opportunity to invest their surplus funds. The Central Bank of Oman (CBO) acts as the Issue Manager and provides the added advantage of ready liquidity through discounting and repurchase facilities (Repo).

It may be noted that the interest rate on the Repo operations with CBO is 0.5 per cent while the discount rate on the Treasury Bills Discounting Facility with CBO is 0.75 per cent.

Furthermore, treasury bills promote the local money market by creating a benchmark yield curve for short-term interest rates. Additionally, the government may also resort to this instrument whenever felt necessary for financing its recurrent expenditures.