More transparent Treasury Bond auctions

The Monetary Board last week recommended several measures to ensure more transparency in Treasury bond auctions.

The Central Bank said in a statement it recommends the bond management team to hold pre-bid meetings with all the Primary Dealers to share information on market developments and to have a clearly defined auction calendar and to examine the international best practices with respect to volumes advertised and accepted at public auctions and propose to the Board as to how the Central Bank should adopt such practices. The CB also recommended the Employees Provident Fund to actively participate at the Primary Auctions.

This announcement came after the articles and discussions relating to the Treasury Bond auctions that took place during the latter part of March 2016, where allegations of lack of transparency were made with regard to the process that was followed.

“The attention of the public is drawn to the fact that the process followed was similar to what has been in practice since February last year when a complete market based mechanism was introduced in auctioning of Treasury bills and bonds,” the statement said.

“The Monetary Board noted the large resource needs of the Government.