Sri Lanka sold the entire Rs. 80 billion of Treasury bills offered at Wednesday’s auction, with yields rising slightly on the shorter tenors, EconomyNext reported on Thursday, citing Public Debt Management Office data.
The three-month bill rose 1 basis point to 9.26%. Rs. 35 billion was offered and Rs. 44.11 billion sold.
The six-month bill rose 3 basis points to 9.44%, with Rs. 25 billion offered and Rs. 29.5 billion sold.
The 12-month bill was unchanged at 9.95%. Rs. 20 billion was offered but only Rs. 6.38 billion sold.
The six- and 12-month bills are available on tap.
The totals match, but the mix does not
The headline — all Rs. 80bn sold — is accurate, and the three tenors sum to Rs. 79.99 billion, consistent with the offered total once rounding is allowed.
What that total conceals is a pronounced shift towards the short end. The three-month bill took Rs. 9.11 billion more than was offered and the six-month Rs. 4.5 billion more, while the 12-month bill raised less than a third of its Rs. 20 billion allocation. In other words the auction filled its target only because demand at three and six months absorbed what the one-year tenor could not.
That pattern is consistent with the yield movements. Investors bid up the shorter tenors — pushing their yields up marginally — while leaving the 12-month bill flat at 9.95% rather than accepting it in volume.
Where this sits
The auction is the Public Debt Management Office’s regular weekly operation. Yields across all three tenors remain within a narrow band of roughly 70 basis points, between 9.26% and 9.95%.
Not reported: the filing does not give the bid-to-cover ratio or the total value of bids received, so the scale of excess demand at the short end cannot be quantified beyond the amounts accepted. It does not say whether the Public Debt Management Office intends to sell additional bills on tap following the auction, as it has done after previous auctions, nor what the weighted average yield was across the full Rs. 80 billion. No other verified newsroom had filed on this auction at the time of writing — daily Treasury bill reporting in Sri Lanka is largely confined to EconomyNext — so this article rests on a single source.
