Secondary trading of treasury bills, bonds up by 89pc in 2019

FT ONLINE

Secondary trading of the government’s fixed income tradable securities jumped by 89.21 percent in the last calendar year, according to the central bank statistics.

It showed that the total value of the secondary trading of treasury bills and treasury bonds stood at Tk 311.10 billion in the January-December period of 2019. The value was Tk 164.41 billion in the same period of 2018.

A sharp decline in sales of savings certificates pushed the government borrowing from commercial banks through these bills and bonds.

Treasury bill is considered as short-term fixed income debt securities of Bangladesh government while treasury-bond is long-term in nature.

Bangladesh Bank (BB) statistics also revealed that the highest amount of secondary transaction of these debt securities took place in December last year. The value of transaction stood at Tk 47.12 billion.

Again, annual secondary transaction of treasury bills and bonds was Tk 164.41 billion in 2018, while the amount was Tk 282.91 billion in 2017. Thus, there was a drop of 41 percent in the annual transaction of these fixed income securities in total. The trend, however, reversed in 2019.

Big jump in the transaction also pushed the yield rates of t-bills and t-bonds in the past year. The average yield rate of 91-day t-bill increased by 163 percent during the period under review while yield rate of 20-year t-bond increased by 10.18 percent.