CBO issues treasury bills worth OMR45mn

Muscat: The Central Bank of Oman (CBO) raised OMR45 million by a way of allotting treasury bills on Monday.

The value of the allotted Treasury bills amounted to RO 5.9 million, for a maturity period of 28 days. The average accepted price reached RO 99.656 for every RO 100, and the minimum accepted price arrived at RO 99.655 per RO 100. The average discount rate and the average yield reached 4.48627% and 4.50177%, respectively.

Whereas, the value of the allotted Treasury bills amounted to RO 39.1 million, for a maturity period of 91 days. The average accepted price reached RO 98.838 for every RO 100, and the minimum accepted price arrived at RO 98.835 per RO 100. The average discount rate and the average yield reached 4.66198% and 4.71680%, respectively.

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 theadded 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 5.50% while the discount rate on the Treasury Bills Discounting Facility with CBO is 6.00%.

Furthermore, 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.