The Bureau of the Treasury (BTr) said it will launch on Monday the country’s maiden offering of peso-denominated Tokenized Treasury Bonds (TTBs) to raise at least P10 billion from the domestic market.
TTBs are one-year fixed-rate government securities that pay semi-annual coupons, which will be offered to qualified institutional buyers (QIBs) on Nov. 20, 2023, with the issue date scheduled on Nov. 22.
It said the first TTBs would be made available to eligible investors in minimum denominations of P10 million and in increments of P1 million thereafter, similar to conventional government securities offers.
The BTr said it would issue the bonds in the form of digital tokens, which would be maintained in the BTr’s Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) Registry.
The BTr said it would implement a dual registry structure, with the DLT Registry running in parallel with the National Registry of Scripless Securities (NRoSS) which would serve as the primary registry.
“As part of the Government Securities Digitalization Roadmap, the maiden issuance of TTBs aims to provide the proof of concept for the wider use of DLT in the government bond market. This proof of concept will serve as the starting point of the NG’s broader agenda of democratizing investment through digital technology, significantly reducing settlement risk and friction costs, ultimately leading to a financially inclusive local bond market,” the BTr said.
It said the bookbuilding exercise for the TTBs would commence at 9 a.m. Nov 20. It asked QIBs to submit bids no later than 12:30 on the same day.
QIBs are asked to submit firm commitment letters to the issue managers including Land Bank of the Philippines and Development Bank of the Philippines (DBP). The BTr said it would issue the notice of awards not later than 2 p.m. of the same day.