The financial market is expected to receive about N96.6 billion maturing treasury bills on Wednesday, September 14, which would determine the direction of trading activities in the money market this week.
Last week, activities at the treasury bills market kicked off on a negative note due to lower system liquidity. Average treasury bills rates jumped from 16.1 per cent on Monday to 16.3 per cent on last Tuesday and sustained uptrend during the week, settling at 17 per cent last Thursday as investors showed preference for OMO auction. In all, average rates declined 0.7 per cent week-on-week to settle at 16.7 per cent.
However, performance in the money market last week was fairly bullish. Rates in the money market remained in the double digit band and trended higher on all days of the week due to tighter system liquidity.
The Central Bank of Nigeria, CBN, mopped up a total of N107 billion from the system through its open market operations (OMO) auction last Monday, thus open buy back (OBB) and overnight rates settled at 20.2 per cent and 22.4 per cent respectively.
Since no major inflow into the system, OBB and overnight rose to 27.3 per cent and 29.1 per cent last Tuesday, further surging 5.8 per cent and 6.4 per cent to 33.2 per cent and 35.5 per cent last Wednesday respectively.
A net effect of N293 billion OMO maturity and N139 billion worth of OMO mop up eased OBB and overnight to 17 per cent and 18.7 per cent respectively last Thursday.
System liquidity further improved last Friday, due to previous day OMO maturity, thus OBB and overnight rates eased to 15.8 per cent and 16.4 per cent respectively. Consequently, OBB and overnight rates appreciated week-on-week, up 2.8 per cent and 1.1 per cent respectively.
