India's short bills clear higher across all three tenors
Serguey Asael Shinder2 min readThe Reserve Bank of India published the cut-offs for its 91-day, 182-day and 364-day Treasury bill auction on 23 September 2026 (Press Release 2026-2027/1171). Notified face value was ₹9,000 crore, ₹8,000 crore and ₹7,000 crore respectively, and in each case the full notified amount was accepted.
Cut-off prices came in at ₹98.6740, ₹97.1800 and ₹94.2749, which the release converts to implicit yields at cut-off of 5.3900%, 5.8196% and 6.0895%.
The comparison is exact, because the previous week's auction was identical in size. On 16 September (Press Release 2026-2027/1124) the same three notified amounts cleared at 5.2801%, 5.7500% and 6.0386%, also fully accepted. Week on week that is roughly 11 basis points more on the 91-day, 7 on the 182-day and 5 on the 364-day.
What it means
Two features of these auctions make them readable in a way most market data is not. The notified amounts were the same on both dates, so nothing in the change comes from a change in supply. And both auctions were fully accepted, meaning the central bank took every rupee it advertised rather than devolving part of it or cutting the issue — so the cut-off is the price at which the whole amount found buyers, not a filtered number.
What that leaves is a clean week-on-week read of where the short end of the government curve priced. The three cut-offs also sit in ascending order across the three maturities, which is the ordinary upward-sloping shape and not in itself news.
We are not offering a reason for the move and not projecting the next one. A single pair of auctions a week apart is two observations; the drivers of short-tenor cut-offs — system liquidity, the calendar of redemptions, the central bank's own operations — are separate series, and reading a cause off two points is exactly the thing this desk does not do.