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By Angelo S. Samonte, Reporter
BENCHMARK interest rates resumed
their climb on Monday’s auction of short-term government
securities or IOUs.
The yield for the 91-day Treasury
bill, which banks use in pricing their loans, inched up to 2.952
percent from the all-time low of 2.680 percent two weeks ago.
Banks were willing to buy as much
as P3.11 billion of the P1-billion three-month debt papers on sale.
This prompted the government to sell another P400 million of the
short-term IOUs.
Similarly, the yield on the
six-month T-bill rose to 3.560 percent, higher than the 3.509
percent recorded during the last auction. Investors likewise were
willing to buy more than what the government had on offer, as
tenders reached P6.58 billion for the P2 billion available. As a
result, the government increased its borrowing of the 182-day paper
by P800 million.
National Treasurer Omar T. Cruz
said buyers are not interested in buying longer-dated T-bills and
prefer to have three and six-month papers.
“There’s a huge client demand
for three-month and six-month securities that’s why there are big
offers from investors. On the contrary, buyers had less appetite for
securities with much longer term,” he said.
“It is a good measure for the
preference on the part of the market and the increase is within the
market expectation,” he said, adding, “There is much
concentration on short term and it is practical for the buyers to
service their clients.”
January debt up slightly
The Bureau of Treasury said the
national government debt as of January had risen slightly as a
result of its sale that month of dollar-denominated global bonds.
The bureau said debts the
government incurred in January reached P20.5 billion, a 0.5-percent
increase from the December level.
Consequently, the government’s
outstanding debt stood at P3.872 trillion, of which 45 percent was
owed to foreign creditors.
“The increase was brought
about by the issuance of $1-billion global bonds with maturity of
25-year. This represents the commercial foreign funding requirement
of the country for the year,” Cruz said.
Debt owed to local creditors
declined slightly as the government’s payments outstripped its
fresh borrowing. Obligations incurred from foreign creditors rose as
the larger amount borrowed offset the impact of a strong peso vis-à-vis
the dollar.
The government’s contingent
debt, composed mainly of guarantees, declined to P563 billion from
P570 billion in December, largely due to the appreciation of the
local currency.
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