Last week, the bank choose not to issue the 182-day Treasury bill which had over-performed for weeks as it sought to avoid heavy maturities at the same time/FILE
NAIROBI, Kenya, Mar 9 – Kenya’s 364-day Treasury bill registered an oversubscription for the first time in six weeks following the Central Bank of Kenya’s move to suspend the sale of the 182-day paper.
Last week, the bank choose not to issue the 182-day Treasury bill which had over-performed for weeks as it sought to avoid heavy maturities at the same time.
The move, which it has repeated this week suspending the sale of the paper in the auction dated March 20, thus, pushed investors to bid for the one-year paper.
“The Central Bank offered 364 days Treasury bills for a total of 97 million dollars. The total number of bids received amounted to 160 million dollars representing a 166 percent subscription,” said CBK in auction data Thursday.
It added that bids accepted amounted to 160 million dollars while the weighted average rate of accepted bids, which will be applied for non-competitive bids was 10.9 percent from 10.8 percent.
Analysts noted that for about five weeks, Treasury was accepting large amounts from the six-month bill, risking the concentration of debt on one paper.
Therefore, there was need to correct the debt market by withdrawing the sale of the paper and floating higher amounts for the 91-day and 182-day securities.
The six-month offer was attractive to investors for weeks because it offered higher return on a risk-adjusted basis compared to the 364-day as their rates were nearly at par at 10.5 and 10.9 percent respectively.
