CAIRO: Egypt’s central bank said on Tuesday it would offer $1 billion in dollar-denominated one-year treasury bills at an auction next week, its second dollar offering in less than a month, as the government struggles to finance a growing budget deficit.
Egypt’s deficit has burgeoned since the uprising at the start of the year, and in October the finance minister said liquidity at domestic banks had almost been exhausted.
The central bank introduced the dollar-denominated T-bills last month when it offered $2 billion in T-bills at an auction that netted only $1.53 billion. The bills carried a weighted average yield of 3.87 percent.
The new dollar T-bills will be auctioned on Dec. 20 for settlement on Dec. 21. They will mature on Dec. 18, 2012, the bank said.
Yields at domestic Egyptian pound T-bill auctions have surged in recent weeks, with the average yield on 91-day bills climbing by more than 2 percentage points since August to above 14 percent.
