CBE Offers EGP 3 Bln T-Bills Today

Central Bank of Egypt (CBE) will offer EGP 3 billion ($496 million) of treasury bills today after a verdict in former President Hosni Mubarak’s trial sparked demonstrations in several cities.

CBE will sell three- and nine-month treasury bills valued at EGP 1 billion and EGP 2 billion, respectively. The yield on the three-month securities rose to a 14.388 percent at last week’s auction. The nine-month rate was at 15.825 percent.

A Cairo court handed life sentences to the former leader and his interior minister Habib El-Adli yesterday for complicity in the deaths of demonstrators during last year’s uprising. It also acquitted six senior police officials of charges related to the killings and Mubarak’s two sons, Alaa and Gamal, of corruption charges. All decisions are subject to appeal. Thousands of demonstrators filled Cairo’s Tahrir Square within hours of the verdict to voice their discontent.

Egypt is less than two weeks away from the second round of the first post-Mubarak presidential election, pitting the Muslim Brotherhood’s Mohamed Mursi against Mubarak’s last Prime Minister Ahmed Shafik.

The yield on Egypt’s 5.75 percent dollar bonds due in 2020 fell three basis points, or 0.03 of a percentage point, to 6.79 percent on June 1. The Egyptian pound was little changed at 6.0393 a dollar, Bloomberg reported.