Oman raises OMR85m from treasury bills

Muscat: Oman’s central bank on Tuesday said that it raised OMR85 million by tendering government treasury bills. The treasury bills have a maturity period of 28 days from August 17 to September 14, 2016.
The average accepted price reached 99.959 for every OMR100 while the minimum accepted price arrived at 99.955 per OMR100. The average discount rate and the average yield reached 0.53983 per cent and 0.54006 per cent, respectively.
The interest rate on the repo operations with the Central Bank of Oman is 1.00744 per cent for the period from August 16 to August 22, 2016 while the discount rate on the treasury bills discounting facility with CBO is 1.75744 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 licensed 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 of Oman.
Also, 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.