CBO issues treasury bills worth OMR20mn

Muscat: Oman’s central bank raised OMR20 million by way of allotting treasury bills on Tuesday.

The treasury bills are for a maturity period of 28 days, from August 18 until September 15.

The average accepted price reached 99.950 for every OMR100, and the minimum accepted price arrived at 99.950 per OMR100. Whereas the average discount rate and the average yield reached 0.65179 per cent and 0.65211 per cent, respectively.

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, 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 the added advantage of ready liquidity through discounting and repurchase facilities (Repo) offered by the Central Bank.

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