CB wants primary dealers to trade on Bloomberg platform

The Central Bank (CB) has asked all primary dealers to undertake inter-primary dealer trades in the trading platform arranged by the CB through the Bloomberg which is a major international financial trading and information electronic platform.

“All primary dealers will report all outright sales of government securities over Rs. 50 million in value, to investors on this platform within 30 minutes of each transaction. Accordingly, the Central Bank will monitor these transactions on an on-going basis and summary of trading information consisting of yield rates and volume by each series of securities traded will be published in the Central Bank website,” the CB said in a press release.

The press release further said, “The CB will release the information twice a day, at noon and close of the day, in due course when the reporting system is fully operative. This information will help investors to study the current status of government securities market conditions along with other financial market and economic information and make more informed decisions in relation to their investments.

“The availability of such market information will further promote transparency, price discovery and outreach of the government securities market in parallel to other financial markets. In due course, outright secondary market sales of government securities by non-primary dealer banks to their customers also will be brought into this system.

“In addition, the Central Bank has commenced procurement process for setting up a dedicated electronic trading platform along with Central Counterparty System.

“Meanwhile, several measures are in the process to strengthen the regulation and supervision of the market in line with international standards. For this purpose, the regulation and supervision of the government securities market has been assigned to the Department of Supervision of Non-bank Financial Institutions whereas the Public Debt Department will undertake functions relating to issuance, registry, market development and debt management. “