Rs. 90 b Treasury bond auctions in focus

• Secondary bond market sees concentrated buying interest
• Rupee dips marginally

By Wealth Trust Securities

 The secondary bond market commenced the week on a somewhat reserved tone yesterday, albeit seeing heavy buying focused on the 01.07.2028 bond maturity and March 2024 bill maturities during the day. Accordingly, trades were seen on the 01.07.2028 maturity, within an intraday low of 14.375% and a high of 14.65%. Additionally, trades were seen on the 01.08.2026 maturity within 15.65% to 15.66%.

Meanwhile, in secondary market bills, November/December 2023 and March 2024 maturities saw trades at levels of 17.50% to 18.75 and 15.35% respectively.

Today’s Treasury bond auction, will see a total offered amount of Rs. 90 billion. The details of today’s auctions are given below, 

The historical Rs. 200 billion of bond auctions conducted on 28 August 2023 saw the 01.08.26 and 01.07.28 maturities record weighted average rates of 15.80% and 15.03 respectively.  

The total secondary market Treasury bond/bill transacted volume for 8 September 2023 was Rs. 7.44 billion.

In money markets, the DOD (Domestic Operations Department) of Central Bank injected liquidity by way of an overnight and term reverse repo auction for volumes of Rs. 30.00 billion and Rs. 50 billion at weighted average rates of 11.32% and 14.13% respectively. The net liquidity deficit stood at Rs. 58.07 billion yesterday.

Further an amount of Rs. 35.55 billion was withdrawn from Central Banks SLFR (Standard Lending Facility Rate) of 12.00% while the weighted average rates on overnight call money and repo were registered at 11.45% and 11.92% respectively

Forex Market 

In the Forex market, the USD/LKR rate on spot contracts closed at Rs. 322.25/322.50 yesterday against Friday’s closing level of Rs. 321.75/322.00.

The total USD/LKR traded volume for 8 September was $ 43.75 million. 

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