CBO issues treasury bills worth OMR168 million

Muscat: Oman’s central bank raised OMR168 million by way of allotting treasury bills on Tuesday.

The treasury bills are for a maturity period of 91 days, from September 8 until December 8, 2021.

The average accepted price reached 99.816 for every OMR100, and the minimum accepted price arrived at 99.810 per OMR100. The average discount rate and the average yield reached 0.73905 per cent and 0.74041 per cent, respectively.

The 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).

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, the 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.