A tender of the government treasury bills (issue number 544) worth RO168mn was announced by the Central Bank of Oman (CBO) this week.

Total value of the allotted treasury bills amounted to RO168mn, for a maturity period of 91 days, from today until December 8, 2021. The average accepted price reached RO99.816 for every RO100 bill, while the minimum accepted price arrived at RO99.810.

The average discount rate and the average yield reached 0.7390 per cent and 0.7404 per cent, respectively.

The interest rate on the repo operations with the CBO is 0.5 per cent while the discount rate on the treasury bills discounting facility with the central bank is 0.75 per cent.

Treasury bills are short-term highly secured financial instruments issued by the Ministry of Finance.

These instruments provide licensed commercial banks the opportunity to invest their surplus funds. The Central Bank of Oman acts as the issue manager and provides the added advantage of ready liquidity through discounting and repurchase facilities (repo).

Furthermore, treasury bills promote the local money market by creating a benchmark yield curve for short-term interest rates. The government may also resort to this instrument whenever felt necessary for financing its recurrent expenditures.