The interbank market was more active during 2006, thus ensuring a more efficient way of banks’ excess liquidity management. The average daily volume of transactions amounted to All 1.6 billion or ALL 0.2 billion more than the previous year average. The interbank market was characterised by narrowing the interest rate spread according to maturities and their positioning close to key interest rate. The average overnight-weekly interest rate spread dropped to 0.7 percentage point in 2006, from 1.6 percentage points in 2005. In the first half of 2006, there was a constant decline in treasury bills yields and government bonds, due to low government demand for funds. In the second half of 2006, following the Bank of Albania’s tightening signals and the increased demand for liquidity in the system,  BIS Review 80/2007  7  there was a gradual rise of these yields. The yields increased respectively by 0.83, 0.45 and 0.98 percentage point in comparison with the previous year. The government bonds issues has increased compared to the previous year, making the banks’ portfolio, as the sole participants in this market, increase to ALL 37.0 billion. The share of bonds to total government securities increased 22 percent in 2006 from 12 percent in the previous year. Their maturity structure varies from 2 to 5 years. Five-year bonds were issued for the first time in November of this year, for the amount of ALL 6.3 billion. The demand for them resulted higher than the issued amount.
Needless to say, the beneficiaries of such efforts will be our own economies which we are striving to develop as quickly as possible. 6  BIS Review 24/2007