The Central Bank of Egypt (CBE) will offer, on behalf of the Ministry of Finance, one-year dollar-denominated treasury bills worth $1bn, due on 30 April 2024.
The proceeds of this tender are directed to pay off the maturity of a previous tender that the Central Bank offered on 3 May 2022, through which it obtained $1.0168bn.
The Central Bank had received 26 bids worth $1.296bn in the latest tender for local treasury bills denominated in the US currency, which the bank offered on 7 February 2023.
According to the Central Bank’s data, on its website, the bank accepted 20 of those offers at a value of $1.066bn, with interest ranging between 4.898% and 4.9%, and an average interest of 4.9%, compared to 4.64% as the lowest price, 4.651% as the highest price, and 4.649% as an average in the last similar tender offered by the bank was on 2 January 2023.
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.
Investors subscribe to bills in dollars in the same manner as issuances of bills in local currency, whereby each bank of the “primary dealers” submits a subscription application to the Central Bank, indicating in it the amount that will be subscribed to in the bills and the interest rate it requests, and the requests are collected at the Central Bank for study and appropriate acceptance.
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.
