The Central Bank of Egypt, on behalf of the Ministry of Finance, will offer a tender for treasury bills denominated in US currency, worth $1bn, for a period of one year, due on 7 February 2024.
The proceeds of this bid were directed to pay off the maturity of a previous bid that the Central Bank offered on 7 February 2022, through which it obtained $1.0785bn.
The Central Bank had received 27 bids, worth $1.03bn, to cover a similar bid put forward by the bank on 2 January at a value of $850m for a year, due on 2 January 2024.
According to Central Bank data, on its website, the bank accepted 21 of those offers at the same offering value, with an interest that ranged between 4.64% as the lowest price, 4.651 as the highest price, and 4.649% as an average, compared to 4.59% as the lowest price, 4.6% as the highest price, and 4.598% as an average over the last similar tender offered by the Bank on 5 December 2022.
The Central Bank allows both local banks and foreign institutions to subscribe to those bills, with a minimum subscription of $100,000 and its multiples.
Banks subscribe to the bills in dollars in the same manner followed in offering the bills in the local currency, whereby each bank submits its bid to the Central Bank, indicating in it the amount that it will subscribe to in the bills and the interest rate it requests, and the bids are collected at the Central Bank for study and acceptance of the appropriate ones.
The return of those dollar bills is determined according to several indicators, the most important of which are interest rates on the dollar in global markets, alternative investment opportunities available to local and foreign banks and financial institutions, and the country’s credit rating.
