Reuters – The Egyptian government sold $1.1bn of one-year dollar treasury bills at an auction on Monday, with the average yield dropping to 2.474%, the central bank said.

Submitted bids amounted to $1.37bn. The Ministry of Finance had set the issue size at $800m.

On 12 January, Egypt sold $1.07bn of the same maturity at 2.593%.

The bank introduced dollar-denominated T-bills in November 2011 after a popular uprising chased away most foreign investors. The government has mainly turned to the local money market to finance its public deficit but the ability of local banks to lend the government Egyptian pounds has been stretched to the limit.