The Central Bank of Nigeria is offering N450 billion worth of Nigerian Treasury Bills (NTBs) for auction on Wednesday, June 17, with the settlement date set for June 18.
This is according to the official notice to Primary Money Market Dealers (PMMD) seen by Nairametrics on Tuesday.
But this is much lower than the Debt Management Office’s (DMO) updated Q2 plan, showing up to N1 trillion on offer, a move to raise more funds in response to government needs.
In the updated programme, DMO increased entire programme size to N4.8 trillion from the earlier N3.95 trillion set in April.
What the data is saying:
This auction is split into three tenors and is going to be conducted via Dutch Auction across:
- N150 billion for 91-day bills
- N50 billion for 182-day bills
- and N250 billion for 364-day bills
- Dealers are expected to submit bids on the CBN’s online portal, the Scripless Securities Settlement System (S4), between 8 a.m. and 11 a.m. on June 17.
- Each bid must be at least N50,001,000, and bids have to be in multiples of N1,000.
- Authorised Market Dealers are advised to send in as many bids as they want, either for themselves or on behalf of their clients.
According to a circular seen by Nairametrics, successful bidders will get an allotment letter on June 18 and are expected to pay up by 11 a.m to their account with the CBN that same day.
However, the CBN still holds the right to increase or reduce the total amount on offer or even reject bids outright.
More insights:
There is some confusion over the offer size as the monetary authorities are yet to explain whether the CBN has scaled back to the original amount or plans to pick up the N1 trillion in excess subscriptions.
In the previous auction in June, the offer size stood at N1 trillion, and CBN accepted about N1.2 trillion out of
implies that overall NTB maturities for Q2 2026 are still at N3.197 trillion.
What changed is the net new borrowing which is now up to N1.6 trillion—way more than the initial target of about N753 billion.
What you should know
Most of the Q2 borrowings are tied to the 364-day bills, which jumped to N4.8 trillion in the revised programme released in June, up from the earlier N3.95 trillion set in April.
- That shows the government prefers locking in funds for a bit longer, hoping to ease pressure on constant rollovers while sticking to the NTB tool.
- The demand has been strong. At the June 3 NTB auction, the DMO put up N1 trillion in offer and got nearly N1.946 trillion in bids.
- Investors have been eager, chasing higher yields even as liquidity remains tight in the system.
- This expansion of NTB auctions comes as the CBN is tightening up liquidity through heavy Open Market Operations (OMO).
- In one of the auctions in May, the CBN pulled about N3.7 trillion out of circulation in a single OMO session.
Both Treasury bills and OMO auctions are used to soak up banking system liquidity, even though they are technically run by different government entities.
The apex bank is expected to conduct one more NTB auction to wrap up the second quarter programme in line with the DMO’s updated Q2 calendar.
