Make money investing in Treasury bills

Posted by Felix Okoli on Saturday July 20, 2013 at 11:18:52:

In Nigeria, one of the safest ways of growing money is by investing it in passive forms of investment such as Treasury bills.

Sure, there may be many small business ideas you could have on where to invest your money but the returns are not certain or guaranteed. With treasury bills however the returns are guaranteed even though it may not be as high as the profit you get from doing business actively in Nigeria.

Why are returns on treasury bills guaranteed? Well because they are backed by the Federal government and normally offered through the CBN.

Assuming the government is offering treasury bills investment at a rate of 15%, it means that you'll get to earn 15% extra per year of the money you invested with them on the maturity date. The government normally used T-bills are a way of raising public funds in order to help finance some of their activities.

Treasury bills are a bit like Fixed deposits since hte sum you put it in fixed and the interest is fixed but it is different a bit in that you are not investing in banks directly but in the government. Also, unlike Fixed deposit accounts, Treasury bills normally require a higher amount of capital than the former.

The Federal government of Nigerian normally issues treasury bills from time to time many times during the year and you can invest through the banks or investment companies. You can buy either from the primary or secondary market and get to earn the income when it matures.

Another good benefit of Treasury bills over Fixed deposit account is that the income you get is interest free meaning that your income from the fixed investment will not be subject to any form of tax such as Withholding tax. You may only pay a commission to your broker for buying it for you are for something like a N1m investment, you could just pay about N1250(0.00125%) as commission.

If you want to invest in treasury bills, just meet up with your bank or securities company and fill and application for your investment. Some companies place a limit on the type of investors they would accept such as N100,000, N1m or even N10m. When the assets are bought for you, it will be held in your account and both the capital and interest would be paid back to you as the maturity date which can be 91, 182 or even 364 days.

What you get from investing in Treasury bills is a higher interest rate, safety for your investment as well as a passive form of investment.