Spanish treasury successfully auctions 5.83b euros

MADRID - The Spanish treasury on Tuesday successfully sold treasury bills worth 5.830 billion euros (7.586 billion US dollars) on the market, paying lower borrowing costs and exceeding slightly its target of between 4.5 (5.855 billion US dollars) and 5.5 billion euros (7.156 billion US dollars).

A total of 1.980 billion euros (2.576 billion US dollars) worth of bonds with a six-month lifespan were auctioned for an average interest rate of 0.794, slightly below the 0.859 percent of the previous issue held in February, while 3.850 billion euros (5.010 billion US dollars) worth of 12-month bonds fetched an average interest rate of 1.363, compared to the 1.548 percent of the previous issue.

As with the other auctions held this year, this auction was considered a success by the Spanish treasury and Spain's Minister of Economy and Competitiveness, Luis de Guindos, highlighted the high demand, which was 3.2 times higher than what was actually sold.

Last week, the Spanish treasury had auctioned around 5 billion euros (6.5 billion US dollars), in its first auction after the Italian general election, the uncertain result of which had prompted the Spanish risk premium to climb towards the 400 point mark.

The IBEX-35 stock market in Madrid has been calm ever since and after this Tuesday's auction the risk premium remained stable around the 320 point mark, while Spain's ten-year bond interest rate was at 4.71 percent.

This Tuesday also saw the Spanish National Institute of Statistics (INE) publish new data about home sales in the country, confirming an 18.9-percent increase year on year in January to a total of 39,670 purchases (the best data since February 2011).

However, the data is slightly misleading as it refers to a period in which potential home buyers were seeking to rush through their purchases at the end of 2012 in order to avoid a rise in sales tax from 4 to 10 percent on the sale of new homes which came into effect at the start of this year.

On a monthly basis, home sales rose by 68.6 percent from December 2012 and the INE pointed out new and used home sales increased by 13.5 percent and 25.1 percent respectively.

This increase is likely to be just a temporary blip and does not hide the fact that home sales have experienced a sharp fall since the crisis started in the country in 2008 when there were around 80,000 house purchases per month.