The Central Bank of Egypt (CBE) Tuesday received 27 offers worth $1.03bn to cover one-year treasury bills (T-bills) denominated in the US dollar at $850m, due on 2 January 2024. According to Central Bank, the bank accepted 21 of those offers with an interest that ranged between 4.64% as the lowest price, 4.651 as the highest price, and 4.649% as an average, compared to 4.59% as the lowest price, 4.6% as the highest price, and 4.598% as an average in the last similar tender offered by the Bank on 5 December 2022. The proceeds of this bid were directed to pay off the maturity of a previous bid that the Central Bank offered on 4 January 2022, through which it obtained $852.9m. The Central Bank allows both local banks and foreign institutions to subscribe to those bills, with a minimum subscription of $100,000 and its multiples. Banks subscribe to the dollar-denominated T-bills in the same manner they do with local T-bills, whereby each bank submits its bid to the Central Bank, indicating in it the amount that it will subscribe to in the bills and the interest rate it requests, and the bids are collected at the Central Bank for study and acceptance of the appropriate ones. The return of those dollar-denominated T-bills is determined according to several indicators, the most important of which are interest rates on the dollar in global markets, alternative investment opportunities available to local and foreign banks and financial institutions, and the country's credit rating.
