A tender of Government Treasury Bills, issue number 553, worth RO313mn was announced this week by the Central Bank of Oman.

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).

The results of the said issue are as follows: the total value of the allotted Treasury bills amounted to RO313mn, for a maturity period of 91 days – from 12 January 2022 until 13 April 2022.

The average accepted price reached 99.821 for every RO100, and the minimum accepted price arrived at 99.820 per RO100.

The average discount rate and the average yield reached 0.71781 per cent and 0.71910 per cent, respectively.

The interest rate on the Repo operations with CBO is 0.5 per cent while the discount rate on the Treasury Bills Discounting Facility with CBO is 0.75 per cent.

Furthermore, the 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 felt necessary for financing its recurrent expenditures.