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Monday Nov 11, 2024
Monday, 29 April 2013 02:49 - - {{hitsCtrl.values.hits}}
By Wealth Trust Securities
The overall yield curve continued to remain stagnant during the week, with the weighted averages of the 91-day and 182-day treasury bills, decreasing for the second consecutive week at the weekly primary auction. However, the weighted average of the 364-day bills remained unchanged, with the total accepted amount exceeding the amount offered.
Subsequent to the release of the auction results, buying interest was witnessed in the secondary bill market with the 364-day maturity trading at levels of 
11.25% - 11.30% and the 182-day bill at levels of 10.20% - 10.25%.
In the meantime the Central Bank increased the total offered amount at next week’s auction to be held on 30 April to Rs. 11 billion in comparison to Rs. 7 billion offered this week. The amounts on offer are Rs. 1 billion of the 91-day bill, Rs. 3 billion of the 182-day bill and a further Rs. 7 billion of the 364-day bill.
In the secondary bond market, the overall yield curve remained rather stagnant with the liquid five-year maturity closing the week at 11.40% - 42% and the eight-year maturity at 11.77% - 82%, with offers at 11.80% levels, as some market participant continued to reduce their duration by selling the longer tenure and buying the 364-day bill. However activity remained rather dull. The Central Bank announced two treasury bonds auctions, to be held on 29 April, consisting of maturities of 01.01.2022 & 01.05.2025. The amounts on offer are Rs. 1 billion each.
Given below are the closing, secondary market yields for the most frequently traded maturities,
Meanwhile in money market, overnight call money and repo rates remained resilient at levels of 9.40% - 9.50 % and 8.50% - 8.75% respectively. Liquidity continued to remain high to close the week at Rs. 24.02 billion. The Central bank continued the practice of conducting daily repo auctions throughout the week in order to drain out excess liquidity from the system at a weighted average ranging from 8.35% to 8.36%.
Furthermore, an amount of Rs, 9.00 billion was mopped up as well for durations of 14-days, 35-days and 21-days at weighted averages of 8.77%, 8.987% and 9.10% respectively by way of outright sales of treasury bills.
Rupee depreciates further during the week
The rupee depreciated during the week against its last week’s closing levels of Rs. 126.70 to a three week low of Rs. 126.88 on Friday. The total USD/LKR traded volume for the first three days of this week stood at US$ 58.38 million. Given below are some forward dollar rates that prevailed in the market,
1-Month – 127.88
3-Months- 129.88
6-Months- 132.88
