Treasurys March bonds fetch Ksh.48.3B

The National Treasury has raised Ksh.48.3 bilion from the sale of Treasury bonds (T-bonds) this month as investor appetites for the instruments rebound.

The windfall from local borrowing was only 3.4 per cent shy of exchequer’s Ksh.50 billion target.

Surprisingly, investors centered their interests on longer timed 20-year re-opened issue putting in bids worth Ksh.32.8 billion against Ksh.15.9 billion in the shorter tenure 10-year issue.

Proceeds from the entire Ksh.48.3 billion will be disbursed towards new borrowing as the National Treasury realigns its domestic borrowing program after falling behind the schedule last month.

Investors in the longer-timed 20-year reopened issue managed to push up interest rates to 13.44 per cent beating the issue’s 13.2 per cent coupon rate as yields on government securities begin resetting upwards.

The Central Bank of Kenya (CBK) nevertheless kept aggressive bidding off the shorter maturing paper to keep interest rates and 12.4 per cent and at par with the advertised coupon rate.

Subsequent to the greater proceeds, the CBK is not expected to issue a secondary offer for the pair of issues and will now line up new offers for April.