MANILA: The Philippines top its previous record sales of 110 billion pesos ($2.58 billion) of retail Treasury bonds (RTB) with the latest offer given strong market liquidity, one of the government's under-writers said on Tuesday.
The Bureau of Treasury raised a total 49.6 billion pesos from an auction on Tuesday and aims to sell more of the retail bonds to the public and state firms during the Feb. 21-29 retail offer.
"It can top 110 billion," Roberto Juanchito Dispo, president of First Metro Investment Corp, told reporters regarding the retail offer.
"The market has to put liquidity to work. They have to look for yields and returns and this is RTBs, where abundant supply of securities can be infused to the market within the offering period, so market will take advantage of that," he said.
The Treasury set the coupon rate for the 15-year retail T-bond at 5.375 percent at Tuesday's auction, identical with secondary market yields for similarly dated paper but lower than 6.25 percent at the last offer in October.
Coupon of the 20-year retail bond was 5.875 percent, which carries a premium against 5.35 percent for the same paper in the secondary debt market.
"The rates are decent," Lester de Leon, a branch manager at Allied Banking Corp, said on the sidelines of a briefing on the retail offer.
Placements in the central bank's short-term Special Deposit Account (SDA) window, an indicator of money market liquidity, climbed to a record 1.72 trillion pesos in the week ending January 27, latest data showed.
It pays interest at an annual rate of 4.3125 percent for seven days, and 4.4375 percent for the longest maturity of 29 days, slightly higher than the central bank's overnight borrowing window.
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