Lacklustre environment in bond markets ahead of weekly bills auction

• Rupee appreciates marginally

By Wealth Trust Securities

The secondary bond market commenced the week on a rather dull note yesterday with limited trades seen on the 01.02.26, 01.05.28, 15.10.28 and 15.06.29 maturities at levels of 8.27% to 8.28%, 9.96% to 10.03%, 10.10% and 10.24% to 10.35% respectively.

This comes ahead of the Treasury bill auction due today, which will have a total amount of Rs. 140 billion on offer, an increase of Rs. 39.50 billion over the previous week. This will consist of Rs. 20 billion on the 91-day maturity, Rs. 50 billion on the 182-day and Rs. 70 billion on the 364-day maturity.

For reference, at the weekly Treasury bill auction held last Wednesday, weighted average yield rates were seen remaining unchanged for the first time in 19 weeks. Accordingly, the weighted average rates were recorded at 7.50% on the 91-day tenor, 7.84% on the 182-day tenor, and 8.25% on the 364-day tenor.  The auction went undersubscribed with only 73.01% or Rs. 73.38 billion of the total Rs. 100.50 billion amount offered. This was despite total bids received exceeding the offered amount by 1.81 times. An additional amount of Rs. 519 million was raised at the 2nd phase.

The total secondary market Treasury bond/bill transacted volume for 28 March was 

Rs. 10.60 billion.

In the money market, the net liquidity surplus stood at 

Rs. 171.89 billion yesterday.

The weighted average rates on call money and repo were registered at 7.94% and 7.97% respectively.

Forex market 

In the Forex market, the USD/LKR rate on spot contracts closed the day appreciating slightly to Rs. 296.10/296.20 as against Rs. 296.25/296.35 the previous day.

The total USD/LKR traded volume for 28 March was 

$ 151.68 million.

 

(References: Central Bank of Sri Lanka, Bloomberg E-Bond trading platform, Money broking companies)