Moderate activity in debt market

By Wealth Trust Securities

As Central Bank offered only an amount of Rs.2 billion for its bond auction due today and reduced its total offered amount for its weekly Treasury bill auction to Rs.15 billion for the first time in seven weeks, activity in secondary bond markets continued to moderate yesterday due to the “Wait and see” approach by market participants ahead of the monthly policy meeting announcement due today.

Trades on the more liquid two 5 year maturities (i.e.01.04.2018 and 15.08.2018) were witnessed within the range of 10.83% to 10.86% and demand for the 364 day bill continued at levels of 11.02% to 11.05%.

Meanwhile, the surplus liquidity in money market increased once again to Rs. 19.8 billion against its Friday’s level of Rs.15.21 billion with an amount of Rs.16.65 billion being drained out by way of an overnight Repo auction conducted by the Open Market Operations (OMO) department of Central bank at a WAvg of 8.35%. This in turn helped call money and repo rates to remain steady to average of 9.56% and 8.68% respectively.

Rupee gains marginally (Subhead)

In Forex market, the rupee appreciated marginally to close the day at Rs.126.30 against its Friday’s closing of Rs.126.40. The total USD/LKR traded volume for the previous day (08-02-13) stood at US $ 33.40 million.