There has been a 5.1% increase in Jamaica’s money market last week, as measured by the aggregated current balances held by Deposit-Taking Institutions at the Bank of Jamaica (BOJ).

The total aggregate current balance now amounts to $66.00 billion. The BOJ’s weekly 30-day Certificate of Deposit (CD) auction was undersubscribed. Total bids amounted to $34.38 billion, below the $40.0 billion issue size, implying a bid-to-offer ratio of 0.86x. 

This 0.86x ratio marks a decline from the previous week’s 1.02x ratio, as the higher offer size (+100.00%), grew faster than the higher bid amount (+68.48%). The average yield on the 30-day CD Auction was 5.86%, 14 basis points above the 5.72% recorded in the previous week. 

The BOJ also conducted a 14-day repo auction last week, offering $3.0 billion in liquidity. Total bids received amounted to $4.0 billion, resulting in a bid-to-offer ratio of 1.3x. The offer volume was twice the size of the previous repo auction on March 16. 

The average yield settled at 5.73%, representing a 3-basis point increase compared with the prior auction. In the foreign exchange market the local currency depreciated slightly by 0.3% against the USD, with the weighted average selling rate for US$1 increasing from $158.71 to $159.16 last week

During the week, the BOJ intervened once in the FX market, selling a total of US$50 million. The total sale amount, however, was significantly below the US$116.50 million received in total bids, indicating a high level of demand for USD.