RBI buys three long-term securities worth Rs.10,000 cr in 3rd special OMO

In the third special open market operation in many weeks, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) yesterday bought three long-term securities worth 10,000 crore rupees while selling the same amount of three short-term bonds.

The RBI had announced to simultaneous purchase and sale of Government Securities (G-Secs) under Open Market Operations (OMOs) for 10,000 crore rupees each last week. Like last week, though the RBI offered to sell four securities in the auction, it accepted bids for three bonds. 

In the current OMO purchase auction, the RBI offered to



purchase three securities including 10-year benchmark government bond, as against just one bond in the previous two auctions. It got bids worth 64,505 crore rupees for the three bonds but choose to accept only bids of 10,000 crore rupees under the OMO purchase auction.

In the previous two similar auctions, the RBI had purchased bonds of 20,000 crore rupees and sold bonds worth 15,326 crore rupees. These special OMO auctions are similar to the US Federal Reserves' Operation Twist aimed at faster transmission of policy rates.