THE Bureau of the Treasury (BTr) has awarded all tenors in its latest auction for Treasury bills (T-bills) with a total of P15 billion, as rates for the security were seen to be at a moderated level.
National Treasurer Rosalia V. de Leon told reporters, “So full award given that the results of the auction mirrors the one that we had last week. Of course, the bids continue to increase but at least it’s already moderated; we are looking at a range of about 10 basis points unlike before of around 20 to 30 basis points.”
The 91-day tenor was awarded the full P4 billion on offer with bids amounting to P4.670 billion at an average annual rate of 5.077 percent. This showed an increase of 9.8 basis points compared to the previous auction rate for the security of 4.979 percent.
For the 182-day T-bill, the auction committee awarded P5 billion coming from bids amounting to P9.032 billion at an average annual rate of 6.233 percent. This posted a growth of 7.4 basis points compared to the previous rate of 6.159 percent.
The 364-day also received a healthy amount of bids at P9.244 billion with the auction committee awarding the full P6 billion on offer at an average annual rate of 6.506 percent. This also showed a growth of 9.6 basis points compared to the rate set during the last auction of 6.410 percent.
She pointed out that investors may still have a cautious stance given that they are still waiting for announcements on the country’s inflation level for October, as well as possible rate hikes from the US Federal Reserve System.
“I guess there is still cautiousness coming from the survey of inflation, the median actually already plateaued, on our end I think that inflation will trend a little bit lower than the September print. Obviously, there should already be a lot of significant impact coming from the measures adopted by the government to be able to moderate inflation and anchor inflationary expectations,” she added.
President Duterte in September issued Administrative Order 13, as well as Memorandum Orders 26 to 28, with measures easing nontariff barriers to help tame inflation and address supply side constraints specifically on agricultural commodities.
“On the other hand, given the results coming out of the data from the US [United States], particularly expectations that the Fed will again make the move in December coming from the payroll numbers recently released by the US, there’s expectation that the Fed will hike in December,” she said.
The Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) had earlier reported that the country’s inflation level reached 6.7 percent in September, breaching the target band of the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) for the year of 2 to 4 percent.
“So there are those two events that the market continues to watch out for, so they’re provisioning for some buffers in the bids that they submitted today, but definitely not as much as they have been doing in the past,” she added.
Total tenders for the T-bills auction on Monday reached P22.9 billion, from the P15 billion on offer.