Govt keeps treasury bill returns higher over policy rate

KARACHI: The government kept treasury bill rates almost unchanged in an auction held on Wednesday, but the returns on all tenors of T-bills remained higher than the State Bank’s policy rate of 11.5 per cent. This was the last auction of T-bills before announcement of the next monetary policy on Oct 26. The results showed that the government raised Rs417.6 billion through this auction and another Rs267.9bn through non-competitive bids, making a total of Rs685.5bn. But investors, mostly banks, were eager to park their maximum liquidity in government papers as the option for domestic lending…