The central bank said Monday, Oct. 28, that there was higher demand for its weekly securities facility with P189.788 billion tenders but it did not lead to an oversubscription with an offer size of P230 billion.
The Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) raised its BSP bills offering to P230 billion this week versus P160 billion previously. The volume was divided as P110 billion for the 28-day tenor and P120 billion for the longer 58 days. Both offerings are higher compared to last week’s P60 billion and P100 billion, respectively.
Total tenders received by the BSP amounted to P189.788 billion, up from P129.785 billion previously. The bid-to-cover ratio stood at 0.8x for the 28-day and 0.9x for the 58-day tenor.
BSP Deputy Governor Francisco G. Dakila Jr. said Monday that BSP accepted P85.142-billion tenders for the 28-day maturity. Meanwhile, it accepted P99.646 billion of the P104.646-billion tenders for the 58-day tenor.
“The resulting weighted average interest rates for the 28-day and 58-day tenors fell by 1.57 basis points (bps) and 2.67 bps from the previous auction to 6.2979 percent and 6.2988 percent, respectively,” said Dakila.
He added that the range of accepted yields for the 28-day widened to 6.1200 percent to 6.4880 percent. It also increased for the 58-day tenor at 6.1480 percent to 6.4880 percent.
The BSP first introduced the BSP bills in September 2020 to respond to the excess liquidity during the height of the pandemic. The securities facility is the central bank’s primary liquidity-mopping up tool, along with the term deposit facility.
The BSP mops up excess liquidity to control inflation and for active liquidity management. Basically, it removes money from banks to park these funds in the BSP’s interest-earning monetary operations and to “influence the underlying demand and supply conditions for central bank money.”