Treasury Rates [April 1, 2024]

Security	Interest Rates
91 – Day Bill	25.7493%
182 – Day Bill	28.2481%
364 – Day Bill	28.8495%

Treasury bill rates declined to their lowest in more than seven months as the ongoing downward trend in Treasury yields entered its fourteenth consecutive week. The Treasury’s performance comes after a monetary policy stay last week where the central bank observed that after a sharp deceleration in the latter part of last year, the pace of disinflation had slowed in the first two months of 2024. It is expected that the government’s conscious efforts to slash rates to reduce its interest cost burden, despite lingering threats to the inflation outlook, will continue to drive rates further down in the short to medium term.

The 91-day bill recorded a much slower rate of decline this week at 25 basis points (bps) compared to last week’s 50 bps loss. It cleared at 25.7493% this week, down from 25.9988% posted last week.

The yield on the 182-day bill began the month with a year-to-date loss of 11.4%, after adding 25 bps to its recent string of declining performances. It moved down to 28.2481% this week from 28.4961% last week.

The 364-day bill similarly fell by 25 bps, adding onto last week’s 50 bps dip. It fell from 29.0996% posted last week to clear at 28.8495% this week, its lowest since mid-June 2023.

Week-on-Week Change

Tenor	Previous	Current	w-o-w Change	w-o-w Change (%)	Year-to-Date
91 – Day	25.9988%	25.7493%	-0.25	-0.96%	-11.94%
182 – Day	28.4961%	28.2481%	-0.25	-0.87%	-11.40%
364 – Day	29.0996%	28.8495%	-0.25	-0.86%	-11.19%

Auction results of tender 1896 revealed that after weeks of strong interest in the government’s short-term assets, demand failed to bridge the government’s target amount as real returns continued to narrow. The government’s target amount was thus undersubscribed by 43.4%.

A total of GHS 2,354.35 million worth of bids were tendered for the 91, 182, and 364 tenors against the government’s target amount of GHS 4,161.00 million. The government accepted all GHS 1,705.91 million, GHS 510.34 million, and GHS 138.10 million worth of bids tendered for the 91-day, 182-day, and 364-day bills.

In the week ahead, we expect the government to return to the domestic market in an attempt to mobilize GHS 2,808.00 million from 91-day, 182-day, and 364-day bills to meet GHS 2.64 billion worth of maturing papers due next week.