Oman issues treasury bills worth OMR82m

Muscat: The Central Bank of Oman (CBO) issued Government Treasury Bills (issue number 25) worth of OMR82 million this week. The bills will have a maturity period of 28 days, beginning February 15, until March 15, 2017.
The average accepted price reached 99.964 for every OMR100 while the minimum accepted price arrived at 99.960 per OMR100. The average discount rate and the average yield reached 0.46976 per cent and 0.46993 per cent respectively.
The interest rate on the Repo operations with CBO is 1.27 per cent for the period from February 14 until February 20, 2017. The discount rate on the Treasury Bills Discounting Facility with CBO is 2.02 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 licenced 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, the 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.