(DNE Photo)
By Hossam Mounir
The Central Bank of Egypt (CBE) raised Sunday morning the offering of treasury bills to $700m, according to a statement from the CBE to banks.
Dollar liquidity collected through the offer will be used to repay the value of a previous offer raised by the CBE in May 2014, worth $725.5m.
CBE will allow local banks and foreign institutions to subscribe to the dollar bills with a minimum of $100,000 and its multiples.
“Offers of dollar bills are considered a good chance for banks working in the Egyptian market to invest their dollar liquidity in a guaranteed area by the government with an appropriate return in light of the absence of other investment aspects for this liquidity,” said Osama El-Manialawy, first assistant General Manager of Funds sector in one of the banks.
“Other available alternatives are a few joint loans raised between long intervals of time in global finance markets with low risky returns.”
He added that returns of dollar bills in the local market are determined according to several indicators, most importantly dollar liquidity in the market and alternative available investment opportunities for banks and local and foreign financial institutions, as well as the state’s credit rating.
The average return of the first offer of the bills reached 3.87% according to El-Manialawy.
