WASHINGTON, USA – The US Department of the Treasury today announced its current estimates of privately-held net marketable borrowing for the January – March 2021 and April – June 2021 quarters.
During the January – March 2021 quarter, Treasury expects to borrow $274 billion in privately-held net marketable debt, assuming an end-of-March cash balance of $800 billion. The borrowing estimate is $853 billion lower than announced in November 2020. The decrease in privately-held net marketable borrowing is primarily driven by a higher beginning-of-January cash balance as a result of lower-than-assumed expenditures.
Privately-held net marketable borrowing excludes rollovers (auction “add-ons”) of Treasury securities held in the Federal Reserve System Open Market Account (SOMA) but includes financing required due to SOMA redemptions. Secondary market purchases of Treasury securities by SOMA do not directly change net privately-held marketable borrowing but, all else equal, when the securities mature and assuming the Fed does not redeem any maturing securities, would increase the amount of cash raised for a given privately-held auction size by increasing the SOMA “add-on” amount.
These borrowing estimates are based upon current law and do not include any assumptions for the impact of additional legislation that may be passed. Enactment of additional recovery and stimulus related legislation could result in actual borrowing that is greater than these current law estimates.
- During the April – June 2021 quarter, Treasury expects to borrow $95 billion in privately-held net marketable debt, assuming an end-of-June cash balance of $500 billion.
During the October – December 2020 quarter, Treasury borrowed $597 billion in privately-held net marketable debt and ended the quarter with a cash balance of $1.729 trillion. In November 2020, Treasury estimated privately-held net marketable borrowing of $617 billion and assumed an end-of-December cash balance of $800 billion. The $20 billion decrease in borrowing resulted primarily from lower-than-assumed expenditures, largely offset by the increase in the cash balance.
Additional financing details relating to Treasury’s Quarterly Refunding will be released at 8:30 a.m. on Wednesday, February 3, 2021.
