Weekly Treasury bill auction in focus

•  Secondary bond yields steady

By Wealth Trust Securities

The weekly Treasury bill auction due today, will have in total an amount of Rs. 100 billion on offer, a reduction of Rs. 20 billion over its previous week. 

This will consist of Rs. 50 billion on the 91-day maturity and Rs. 25 billion each on the 182-day and 364-day maturities. At last week’s auction, weighted average rates on the 91-day and 182-day maturities remained steady at 29.91% and 28.72% respectively while the weighted average rate on the 364-day maturity decreased by 06 basis points to 27.72%. 

An amount of Rs. 129.43 billion was accepted in total against its total offered amount of Rs. 120 billion.

In the secondary bond market, limited trades were witnessed on the 01.07.25, 15.05.26 and 01.05.27 maturities at levels of 32.20%, 29.10% to 29.30% and 29.00% to 29.05% respectively.

In money markets, the overnight net liquidity recorded at a surplus of Rs. 62.18 billion yesterday as an amount of Rs. 175.00 billion was deposited at Central Banks SDFR (Standard Deposit Facility Rate) of 14.50% against an amount of Rs. 112.82 billion withdrawn from Central Banks SLFR (Standard Lending Facility Rate) of 15.50%. 

The weighted average rates on overnight call money and REPO stood at 15.50% each.

Forex Market 

In the Forex market, the middle rate for USD/LKR spot contracts was recorded at Rs. 361.96 against its previous days of Rs. 361.9589.

The total USD/LKR traded volume for 06th February was $ 19.10 million.  

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