Saturday, August 24, 2013

RBI buys Rs.6,231 crore worth of bonds
The move is aimed at putting money back into the banking system and cooling off bond yields
Mumbai: The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) on Friday bought Rs.6,231 crore worth of bonds from the secondary market in its first bond buy-back programme since it tightened liquidity in mid-July, to put money back into the banking system and cool off bond yields.
The offer was to buy up to Rs.8,000 crore of bonds. Details of the bond auction, published on the RBI website, showed the central bank bought the bonds almost in line with the prevalent market price.

RBI offered to buy four securities maturing between 2022 and 2030, including the benchmark 10-year bond maturing in 2023, which was trading at 8.24% before the cut-off results were published.
The cut-off yield at which RBI bought this bond was at 8.2571%, auction results showed. The yields on this 10-year bond closed at 8.2635% at 5pm.

RBI had offered to buy bonds from the secondary market on Tuesday after the 10-year bond yield touched 9.49%, highest since September 2001, making borrowing costs prohibitively costly for the government. The yield came down the next day on RBI’s decision to buy bonds from the secondary market, at regular intervals.