CBO issues treasury bills worth OMR25 million

Muscat: Oman’s central bank raised OMR25 million by way of allotting treasury bills on Tuesday.
The treasury bills are for a maturity period of 28 days, from Wednesday until April 1, 2020.
The average accepted price reached 99.882 for every OMR100 while the minimum accepted price arrived at 99.880 per OMR100. The average discount rate and the average yield reached 1.53821 per cent and 1.54003 per cent respectively.
The interest rate on the Repo operations with the CBO is 1.856 per cent for the period from March 3, 2020, to March 9, 2020, while the discount rate on the treasury bills discounting facility with the CBO is 2.606 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 help 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 CBO. 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.