Muscat: An announcement was made via a government tender (Issue No. 538), that Government Treasury Bills worth RO 35 Million will be made available, this week. Treasury Bills are issued by the Finance Ministry and, they serve as a way for commercial banks to make short–term investments thereby, utilizing their surplus funds.
The Bills are issued by the Central Bank of Oman (CBO) and they bring to the table, the added advantage of providing ready liquidity through discounting and repurchase facilities, also known as Repo.
The details of the issue are as follows: The allotted Treasury bills amounted to RO 35 million, with a maturity period of 91 days, commencing from 26th May 2021 until 25th August 2021. The average accepted price was worth 99.806 for every RO 100, and the minimum accepted price is worth 99.805 per RO 100.
The average discount rate and the average yield achieved a valuation of 0.77641% and 0.77792%, respectively. The interest rate on Repo operations with the CBO is at 0.5% while the discount rate on the Treasury Bills Discounting Facility with CBO is 0.75%.
The purpose of releasing these bills is to improve the yield curve for short–term interest rates thereby, improving local monies. The Government announced its inclination to resorting to this method as a way to finance their recurrent expenditures.
