What are Money Markets and money market instruments?
Money Markets allow banks to manage their liquidity as well as provide the Central Bank means to conduct monetary policy. Money markets are markets for debt instruments with a maturity up to one year. The most active part of the money market is the call money market (i.e. market for overnight and term money between banks and institutions) and the market for repo transactions. The former is in the form of loans and the latter are sale and buyback agreements - both are obviously not traded. The main traded instruments are Commercial Papers (CPs), Certificates of Deposit (CDs) and Treasury Bills (T-Bills).
Commercial Paper
A Commercial Paper is a short term unsecured promissory note issued by the raiser of debt to the investor. In India, Corporates, Primary Dealers (PD), Satellite Dealers (SD) and Financial Institutions (FIs) can issue these notes.It is generally companies with very good ratings which are active in the CP market, though RBI permits a minimum credit rating of Crisil-P2. The tenure of CPs can be anything between 15 days to one year, though the most popular duration is 90 days. Companies use CPs to save interest costs.
Certificates of Deposit
These are issued by banks in denominations of Rs 5 lakhs and have maturity ranging from 30 days to 3 years. Banks are allowed to issue CDs with a maturity of less than one year while financial institutions are allowed to issue CDs with a maturity of at least one year.
Treasury Bills
Treasury Bills are instruments issued by RBI at a discount to the face value and form an integral part of the money market. In India Treasury Bills are issued in four different maturities - 14 days, 90 days, 182 days and 364 days.Apart from the above money market instruments, certain other short-term instruments are also in vogue with investors. These include short-term corporate debentures, bills of exchange and promissory notes.
