Muscat: The Central Bank of Oman (CBO) raised OMR75 million by way of allotting treasury bills on Monday.
The value of the allotted Treasury bills amounted to OMR30 million, for a maturity period of 28 days. The average accepted price reached OMR99.605 for every OMR100, and the minimum accepted price arrived at OMR99.605 per OMR100. The average discount rate and the average yield reached 5.14911% and 5.16953%, respectively.
The value of the allotted treasury bills amounted to OMR20 million, for a maturity period of 91 days. The average accepted price reached OMR98.680 for every OMR100, and the minimum accepted price arrived at OMR98.680 per OMR100. The average discount rate and the average yield reached 5.29451% and 5.36533%, respectively.
On the other hand, the value of the allotted Treasury Bills amounted to OMR25 million, for a maturity period of 364 days. The average accepted price reached OMR95.045 for every OMR100, and the minimum accepted price arrived at OMR95.045 per OMR100. The average discount rate and the average yield reached 4.96861% and 5.22764%, 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 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 6.00% while the discount rate on the Treasury Bills Discounting Facility with CBO is 6.50%.
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.