Government failed to meet its Treasury bills target for the six week running, as liquidity tightened further on the interbank market.

According to the auction results by the Bank of Ghana, the costs of the short term securities however remained low.

The government’s target fell by about 20%, as it mobilized a little above GH¢913 million.

However, this could be partially due to its quest to keep cost of domestic borrowing lower.

Generally, money in circulation has declined albeit slightly, a testament of further tightening of liquidity on the interbank market.

Government actually accepted all the bids from the investors, mostly banks, as a little above GH¢789 million was raised from the sale of the 91-day Treasury bill.

This indicates that investors prefer the 3-months short instrument to the 6-months and one-year bills. The interest cost of the 91-day T-Bills also fell by 0.05 percentage points from the last week’s trading to 12.78%. But the yield of the 6-months bill shot up by 0.05% to 13.5%.

The past few weeks have seen liquidity squeezed on the market, depriving government the opportunity to raise adequate cash on the domestic market to finance its programmes.

The liquidity challenges on the market has been predicated by the 2021 Budget of Fiscal Consolidation. This is as a result of implementation of some new taxes, which has triggered increases in prices of some goods and services.

Securities	Bids Tendered (GH¢)	Bids Accepted (GH¢)	Interest rate
91 Day Bill	789.13 million	789.13 million	12.78%
182 Day Bill	124.12 million	124.12 million	13.57%
Total	913 million	913 million
Target	1.142 billion