Government raises P51 billion from T-bills

MANILA, Philippines — The government managed to borrow P51 billion in short-term securities this month, roughly 93 percent of the target amount amid high asking rates from investors.

The Bureau of the Treasury yesterday made a full award of P10 billion on offer. This is the last T-bills auction for November.

This brought total T-bills raised for the month at P50.97 billion, which is 93 percent of the revised target of P55 billion to be borrowed from the local debt market.

T-bill rates this month were generally on an upward trend as an effect of the decision of the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas to take an off-cycle action by hiking rates by 25 basis points.

This brought the benchmark rate to 6.50 percent, the highest in 16 years.

Rates only slid down a bit after favorable data on inflation and gross domestic product announcement during the month.

Inflation eased to 4.9 percent in October while GDP surprised with a 5.9-percent expansion in the third quarter, both beating market expectations.

Yesterday’s auction was the second straight week of full award, albeit at a slightly lower target amount than the usual P15 billion.

Nonetheless, demand continued to pick up as it jumped to P72.215 billion, up 55 percent. The auction was oversubscribed by 7.2 times.

Bids also went up across the board to P25.615 billion, P22.38 billion, and P24.22 billion for the three, six, and 12-month securities, respectively.

On the other hand, rates yesterday went down across the board in comparison with the reference rates, as well as on a weekly basis following the appreciation of the peso.

Rates for the 91-day T-bills dropped by 98.7 basis points to 4.753 percent from the secondary rate of 5.74 percent, and is lower from last auction’s 6.123 percent.

The 182-day short-dated debt papers saw rates decline by 75.7 basis points to 5.181 percent and also below last week’s level of 5.938 percent.