In the just concluded week, CBN auctioned Treasury bills worth N67.44 billion via the primary market.
In line with our expectation, stop rates for 90-day, 182-day, and 364-day bills moderated to 2.75% (from 5.50%), 7.15% (from 7.30%), and 8.49% (from 9.89%), respectively, amid investors’ high demand for short term fixed income securities.
We saw the 90-day, 182-day, and 364-day T-bills were oversubscribed with a bid-to-cover ratio of 10.36x, 1.19x, and 6.39x respectively.
Notably, the auctioned T-bill outflows exceeded the total inflows of N64.43 billion.
In line with the direction of rates in the primary market, NITTY for 1 month, 3 months, 6 months, and 12 months maturities fell to 2.75% (from 5.13%), 3.94% (from 6.24%), 5.69% (from 8.83%), and 8.80% (from 10.60%), respectively.
Meanwhile, NIBOR moved northwards (bearish) for the bulk of maturities tracked despite N30 billion worth of OMO bills maturing via the primary market.
Specifically, NIBOR for Overnight fund, 3 months, and 6 months tenor buckets increased to 10.00% (from 9.73%), 13.06% (from 11.98%), and 13.94% (from 12.50%) respectively.
However, NIBOR for 1 month stayed unchanged at 11.50% w-o-w
OMO maturity bills worth N20.00 billion is expected to hit the system and keep liquidity afloat; nevertheless, we expect interbank rates to rise marginally given the relatively smaller amount of maturing bills..
