Muscat: The Central Bank of Oman (CBO) raised OMR29 million by way of allotting treasury bills on Tuesday.

The value of the allotted Treasury bills amounted to OMR12 million, for a maturity period of 28 days. The average accepted price reached OMR99.654 for every OMR100, and the minimum accepted price arrived at OMR99.650 per OMR100. The average discount rate and the average yield reached 4.50818 per cent and 4.52384 per cent, respectively.

The value of the allotted Treasury bills amounted to OMR12 million, for a maturity period of 91 days. The average accepted price reached OMR98.774 for every OMR100, and the minimum accepted price arrived at OMR98.770 per OMR100. The average discount rate and the average yield reached 4.91680 per cent and 4.97782 per cent, respectively.

On the other hand, the value of the allotted treasury bills amounted to OMR5 million, for a maturity period of 182 days. The average accepted price reached OMR97.545 for every OMR100, and the minimum accepted price arrived at OMR97.545 per OMR100. The average discount rate and the average yield reached 4.92349 per cent and 5.04740 per cent, respectively.

Treasury bills are short-term highly secured financial instruments issued by the Ministry of Finance, and they provide licensed commercial banks with the opportunity to invest their surplus funds. The Central Bank of Oman (CBO) acts as the Issue Manager and provides the added 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 5.25 per cent while the discount rate on the Treasury Bills Discounting Facility with CBO is 5.75 per cent.

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.

Source: Times of Oman