Sri Lanka sold a further 7,206 million rupees of Treasury bills on tap at this week’s auction rates, taking total bill sales for the week to 73.332 billion rupees against 90 billion offered, EconomyNext reported on Thursday, citing the Public Debt Management Office. Settlement is 16 October.
The tap covered all three tenors at the rates set on Wednesday: 9.30 percent at three months, 9.44 percent at six months and 9.95 percent at twelve.
The tap was taken in full, which is itself the signal
Total market subscription at the tap was 7,206 million rupees — exactly the amount sold. The debt office accepted every rupee bid, a cover ratio of 1.0.
The contrast with the same office’s bond operation on the same morning is sharp. At Thursday’s bond tap, 10,715 million rupees was bid and 5,000 million accepted — roughly 47 percent, with the week’s bond issuance left 14.31 billion rupees short of target by choice. On bills the office took everything available and still finished 16.668 billion rupees below the week’s 90 billion offer. The constraint on the bill side was demand, not appetite.
Wednesday’s auction, and where it fell short
The week’s primary auction sold 66.12 billion rupees of the 90 billion offered, EconomyNext reported at 5.21 p.m. on 14 October:
| Tenor | Offered | Sold | Fill | Yield |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 3-month | Rs 40bn | Rs 40.19bn | 100% | 9.30% (+4bp) |
| 6-month | Rs 30bn | Rs 8.45bn | 28% | 9.44% (unchanged) |
| 12-month | Rs 20bn | Rs 17.48bn | 87% | 9.95% (unchanged) |
The three tenors sum to 66.12 billion exactly. Adding the tap gives 73.326 billion against the 73.332 billion reported for the week — a six-million-rupee gap that resolves as rounding, since the week total implies Wednesday’s sale was 66.126 billion before the component figures were rounded to two decimals.
The entire shortfall sat in the six-month bill, which left 21.55 billion rupees unsold.
Demand has moved along the curve, and the yields did not move with it
Read against last week’s auction, the two ends of the curve have swapped places — at prices that barely changed.
| Tenor | 7 Oct auction fill | 14 Oct auction fill | Yield then → now |
|---|---|---|---|
| 3-month | 126% (Rs 44.11bn of 35bn) | 100% (Rs 40.19bn of 40bn) | 9.26% → 9.30% |
| 6-month | 118% (Rs 29.5bn of 25bn) | 28% (Rs 8.45bn of 30bn) | 9.44% → 9.44% |
| 12-month | 32% (Rs 6.38bn of 20bn) | 87% (Rs 17.48bn of 20bn) | 9.95% → 9.95% |
A week ago the six-month bill was oversubscribed and the 12-month could not raise a third of its allocation. This week that is reversed: the 12-month filled 87 percent while the six-month took barely a quarter of its offer — and both did so at exactly the yields they carried last week, 9.44 and 9.95 percent. The only yield that moved anywhere on the curve was the three-month, up four basis points to 9.30.
That is a change in which maturity investors want rather than in what they are paid for it. This desk described last week’s pattern as investors crowding into the short end; a week later the crowd has moved to one-year paper without a repricing to draw it there.
Two other things changed. The offer was raised from 80 billion rupees to 90 billion, and where last week’s auction filled completely, this one left 26.5 percent unsold — the tap recovering only about a third of that gap.
Context
The Public Debt Management Office is the Treasury body created to consolidate sovereign borrowing, and Sri Lanka’s medium-term debt strategy for 2026–2030 leans on domestic issuance of this kind. The week’s borrowing runs alongside capital spending below 30 percent of its allocation at nine months.
Not reported
Neither filing gives the bid-to-cover ratio at Wednesday’s auction, the total value of bids received, or the weighted average yield across the full sale — so demand at the three-month tenor cannot be quantified beyond the amount accepted. Neither explains why six-month demand collapsed at an unchanged yield, nor says whether the 16.67 billion rupees still unsold will be re-offered.
Both sources are EconomyNext, so this article rests on a single newsroom. That is the standing pattern for daily Treasury bill reporting in Sri Lanka rather than a gap in searching: Daily FT’s financial-services desk files weekly auction reports but had nothing on this one at the time of writing, and no other verified outlet had covered either sale.
