Getting back to markets

Just a few days after John Corrigan of the NTMA said this:

“Our plan would be to try and return to the Treasury Bill market, which is for debt instruments with less than three month maturity, to try and return to that market by mid-year which would represent the first signs of normalisation, and as regards the longer-term market towards the end of 2012 early 2013 but again it is subject to external conditions improving.”

It might be worth considering this:

Meanwhile, Greece saw its borrowing rates ease marginally in a bill auction on Tuesday.

The public debt agency said it raised €1.625 billion ($2.06 billion) in a sale of 13-week treasury bills, an interest rate of 4.64 per cent, compared with 4.68 per cent in the last such auction in December.

Demand for the bills was 2.90 times the amount on offer, roughly the same as last month.

Unable to issue long-term debt due to untenably high borrowing costs, it maintains a market presence through regular treasury bill auctions.

A country whose ten-year yield is nearly 35%, whose two-year yield is 164% and is forecast to default in exactly nine weeks was out in the markets today and raised over €1.5 billion of three-month funds at an interest rate of 5%, with demand of close to €5 billion.

While getting back to short-term markets is undoubtedly an important first step, it is a small step and is one that a country with a nine-year yield of 7.5% and a two-year yield of 5.7% should have little problem in achieving.    Irish has an outstanding bond maturing in seven weeks that is yielding 2.12%.

Today saw a steepish decline in the nine-year yield on Irish government bonds as calculated by Bloomberg.

At 7.47% this is the lowest the reported yield has been since the 4th of November 2010.