Muscat: A tender of Government Treasury Bills, issue number 159, worth RO 125 million was issued this week.

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 OMR 125 million, for a maturity period of 182 days, from 26 January 2022 until 27 July 2022. The average accepted price reached OMR 99.611 for every OMR 100, and the minimum accepted price arrived at OMR 99.580 per OMR 100.

The average discount rate and the average yield reached 0.78094% and 0.78399%, respectively.

It may be noted that the interest rate on the Repo operations with CBO is 0.5% while the discount rate on the Treasury Bills Discounting Facility with CBO is 0.75%.

Furthermore, 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.