National Treasurer Rosalia de Leon
MANILA – The rate of the Philippine 35-day Treasury bill (T-bill) posted an uptick Tuesday as demand for the debt paper remained strong.
The average rate of the paper rose to 1.163 percent from 1.157 percent during the auction last August 4.
“There remains good demand with PHP118 billion maturities,” National Treasurer Rosalia de Leon told journalists in a text message after the auction.
The Bureau of the Treasury (BTr) offered the paper for PHP15 billion and bids totaled to PHP29.313 billion. The auction committee made a full award.
De Leon, however, considers the rate movement as “flat as (the) market sees BSP decision is to hold.”
She is referring to the rate-setting meeting of the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas’ (BSP) policy-making Monetary Board (MB) scheduled on Thursday.
The MB is widely expected to keep the central bank’s key rates steady after aggressively hiking rates in recent months to help buoy the economy from the impact of the pandemic.
To date, the Board has cut the BSP’s key rates by a total of 175 basis points, which authorities traced to policy leeway provided by the within-target inflation rate.
The rate of price increases accelerated in the last two months, with the July figure at 2.7 percent from month-ago’s 2.5 percent.
However, average inflation to date stood at 2.5 percent, within the government’s 2 to 4 percent target band for this year until 2022. (PNA)
