THE country’s first tokenized Treasury bond (TTB) offering was met with strong demand on Monday, prompting the government to upsize the offer.

At P31.426 billion, the book size was more than three times the target issue size of P10 billion. This allowed the Treasury bureau to expand the issue size to P15 billion at a rate of 6.5 percent, in line with prevailing oneyear secondary market rates despite the TTBs currently being non-tradable.

The bonds are in the form of digital tokens to be stored in the Bureau of the Treasury’s Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) Registry.

A dual registry structure is being employed for the offering, with the DLT Registry being run alongside the National Registry of Scripless Securities, which will act as the main registry.

“The issuance of the TTBs demonstrates the BTr’s commitment toward increased financial inclusion through the modernization of financial platforms and the reduction of friction costs, thus easing retail investor access to government securities,” the Treasury said in a statement.

“The success of the TTBs would not have been possible without the unwavering support of Finance Secretary Benjamin Diokno, Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas Governor Eli Remolona Jr. and Monetary Board Member Rosalia de Leon during the transaction,” it added.

Diokno said the bond tokenization program was aligned with the national government’s vision of a financially inclusive domestic capital market.

He added that by simplifying settlement processes and reducing transaction costs, the move represented a significant stride toward the objective

of “democratizing investment and empowering small investors.”

Remolona, meanwhile, said the effort to tokenize Treasury bonds was tied into the central bank’s broader agenda of digital transformation and capital market development.

“Our goal is to expand investment options so that more Filipinos can grow their money through these fixed-income investments while contributing directly to economic growth,” he added.

“Right now, the focus is on institutional investors but hopefully, we can expand this project to retail investors over time.”