Despite a context marked by the Covid-19 health crisis, the activity of the Treasury securities market shows an upward trend during the first three months of 2020. According to the quarterly bulletin of the public securities market of Cemac , published on July 29, 2020, the issuance of Treasury securities reached CFAF 667.98 billion.
The activities of the Treasury securities market of the countries of the Economic and Monetary Community of Central Africa (CEMAC), in the first quarter of 2020, recorded, in issues of assimilable Treasury bills (BTA) and assimilable Treasury bonds (OTA), an amount of CFAF 667.98 billion. This represents an increase of 5.49% compared to the previous quarter.
According to the Securities Settlement and Custody Unit by type of instrument, and like in previous periods, issues as of March 31, 2020 remain concentrated on BTAs, which represent 80.49% of the amounts raised. In fact, BTA issues reached 537.68 billion CFA francs, an increase of 100.28 billion compared to the last quarter of 2019. OTA issues between January and March 2020 amounted to 130 , 30 billion CFA francs, down 65.50 billion compared to the previous quarter when this amount stood at 195.8 billion CFA francs.
“During this quarter, the Public Treasuries of Gabon, Chad and Cameroon were the most active on the market, with issues representing respectively 33.43%, 19.89% and 19.42% of the total. resources raised on this market ”, underlines the quarterly bulletin of the public securities market of Cemac published on July 29, 2020.
However, the resources mobilized on this Treasury securities market during the period under review were still below the overall forecast amount of CFA Franc 774.44 billion. Regarding the coverage of Treasury securities issues, this has improved overall during the first quarter of 2020.
On average, the issues produced by the Public Treasuries were oversubscribed. In fact, the average coverage rate for BTA issues stood at 150.5%, against 126.6%, in the fourth quarter of 2019. The average subscription rate for OTA issues stood out at 112.7%, well above the rate of 88.0% recorded in the previous quarter.
The analysis by country shows, with regard to BTA, that the emissions of Congo, Gabon, and to a certain extent, those of Cameroon are the most popular. It should be noted that the subscription rates for BTA issues from Equatorial Guinea and Cameroon fell slightly during the period under review. Regarding OTAs, subscription rates for securities issued by the Congo Public Treasury were the highest in the first quarter of 2020.
