PH Govt To Issue $3B In RTBs For OFWs By June

Finance Secretary Benjamin Diokno said the Marcos administration plans to launch a bigger tranche worth $3 billion US dollar-denominated Retail Treasury Bonds (RTBs) for overseas Filipino communities.

“There may be appetite among OFWs (overseas Filipino workers) so it could be around $3 billion,” Diokno said.

Diokno said like in the previous batch, the next dollar RTB tranche would have a tenor of at least five years.

Additionally, National Treasurer Rosalia de Leon mentioned that Diokno intends to optimize the Filipino diaspora for the RTBs.

“Last year, we issued $1.5 billion but mostly taken up by FCDUs (foreign currency deposit units), so this time around we really want to tap the OFWs,” de Leon said.

De Leon said the minimum investment for the new tranced would be lowered to $200 from $300 to attract more OFW investors.

State-owned Land Bank of the Philippines and Development Bank of the Philippines will arrange the process which will likely happen within the first half of the year, De Leon followed.

Diokno will be meeting with the overseas Filipino community after the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland and it will double as a financial literacy session to promote the RTBs as an investment option.

“We want to tell them they don’t even have to be here because there are platforms. They could order from their smartphone like through bonds.ph and it will be in their name instead of their spouse or other people,” De Leon said.

“It’s also for them to also know we have an additional investment product if they want to preserve the value of their dollars,” she added.

De Leon said tapping into at least 10% of remittances from OFWs would boost demand for the RTB offering.

Source: Inquirer.net