RO 49 million worth treasury bills tendered

MUSCAT: A tender of government treasury bills, issue number 48, was held at the Central Bank of Oman (CBO) this week. The results of issue are as follows: The total value of the allotted treasury bills amounted to RO 49 million, for a maturity period of 28 days, from January 10 until February 7. The average accepted price reached 99.899 for every RO 100, and the minimum accepted price arrived at 99.890 per RO 100. Whereas the average discount rate and the average yield reached 1.31022 per cent and 1.31155 per cent, respectively. The interest rate on the Repo operations with CBO is 2.054 per cent for the period from January 9 to January 15, while the discount rate on the treasury bills discounting facility with CBO is 2.804 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. Furthermore, 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. — ONA