The national government partially borrowed on Monday, Oct. 10, after benchmark yields for short-term loans moved sideways.
At Monday's auction of Treasury bills, the Bureau of the Treasury awarded only P3.965 billion, well below the programmed P15 billion.
National Treasurer Rosalia V. De Leon said that bids from investors were unreasonable to make a full award.
“Given our good revenue performance, we have latitude to reject should we find the interest rates not reasonable,” De Leon told reporters after the auction.
The bellwether 91-day Treasury bill rate, which banks use in pricing their loans, slid to 3.819 percent from 4.660 percent last week.
With lower yields, the Treasury sold only P1.27 billion of the P5 billion worth of three-month debt papers on offer. Investors were asking for P7.58 billion of the government security or IOU.
Yield on the 182-day T-bill also dropped to 4.415 percent from the previous 4.902 percent as investors were willing to buy P5.645 billion of the six-month IOUs. The government awarded P2.695 billion, lower than the P5 billion program.
Meanwhile, the Treasury rejected offers for the one-year IOU. Had the government accepted the bid, rate would have risen to 5.401 percent from 4.937 percent
The one-yield debt papers attracted P3.081 billion worth of bids, below the P5 billion on offer.