By: ONA

Oman: The Central Bank of Oman (CBO) raised OMR 30 million by way of allotting treasury bills.

The value of the allotted treasury bills amounted to OMR 9 million, for a maturity period of 28 days. The average accepted price reached OMR99.660 for every OMR 100, and the minimum accepted price arrived at OMR99.660 per OMR 100. The average discount rate and the average yield reached 4.43214 percent and 4.44726 percent, respectively.

The value of the allotted treasury bills amounted to OMR 21 million, for a maturity period of 91 days. The average accepted price reached OMR 98.704 for every OMR 100, and the minimum accepted price arrived at OMR 98.700 per OMR 100. The average discount rate and the average yield reached 5.19805 percent and 5.26630 percent, respectively.

Treasury bills are short-term highly secured financial instruments issued by the Ministry of Finance, and they provide licensed commercial banks 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 6.00 percent while the discount rate on the Treasury Bills Discounting Facility with CBO is 6.50 percent.

Further, 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 it feels necessary to finance its recurrent expenditures.