Portugal gets a record negative rate with short term debt

Portugal registered negative rates again to finance itself with short term debt. Both in the three months and 11 months’ auction, IGCP got the most negative interests ever. In total, 1,100 million euros were raised, an amount that stood within the expected range.

This Wednesday morning, there were two auctions for Treasury Bills maturing in three and 11 months. In the first case, to obtain 300 million euros, IGCP got an interest rate of -0.417% with securities maturing in May, comparable to the 0.389% rate from the previous comparable auction, while demand was 3.5 times higher than supply. As for the auction of bills maturing in January of next year, the rate stood at -0.393%, comparable to the -0.325% rate from the previous auction, in a line that got 800 million euros.

Interests remain negative

With this operation, the Treasury obtained another 1,100 million euros, an amount that met expectations: IGCP foresaw issuing between 1,000 million and 1,250 million euros.

This good result emerges after the long term auction from the previous week was slightly affected by the recent volatility in the Portuguese markets, which lead Portugal to repay more than 2% for the ten-year debt.

According to the 2018 State Budget, Portugal hopes to get another 21 billion euros with Treasury bills. For now, in two financing operations already performed this year, the amount already ascends to 2,850 million euros.