On March 24, the Banco de la República de Colombia (BanRep in Spanish) issued three circulars to regulate open market operations, bond purchases and debt reduction, which are now in force. After its last meeting on 23 March, the BanRep’s Board of Directors announced that a series of measures would be implemented to provide permanent liquidity to the economy to facilitate financial market operations. These measures will be put into effect in the next few days.

The BanRep circulars establish the following:

• Circular DODM-148. Foresees modifications to the mechanisms used to perform open market operations and sets out new conditions for bid submission and completion. It also includes a form for the submission of offers to buy and sell securities to the BanRep, and a form for the transfer of foreign-currency denominated securities..
• Circular DODM-141. Amends the conditions to settle expansion and definitive contraction operations carried out with foreign debt securities of the Nation, public debt securities, Security bonds, and Peace bonds, among others.
• Circular DEFI-354. Introduces amendments for carrying out definitive expansion operations through the firm purchase, in cash, of ordinary bonds and Term Certificates of Deposit issued by banking establishments, financial corporations, financing companies and financial cooperatives. 

Regarding the measures to provide liquidity in the markets adopted by the Board of Directors of the entity, it is worth mentioning the following:

• The BanRep is authorized to purchase private securities issued by credit establishments, with a remaining maturity of three years or less. Purchases will be carried out through variable price auctions. These securities will be purchased for a total of approximately USD 2,454,905,000. 
• The BanRep is authorized to buy up to USD 490,981,000 of public debt securities during the remainder of March. These purchases will be performed through the Electronic Trading System (SEN) of the Banco de la República.
• The Banco de la República will continue auctioning repos (repurchase agreements) with private securities for USD 122,745,250. This shall be done when there are no firm purchase auctions of this type of securities. The next auction will be called for April 1st.
• The BanRep will maintain daily repurchase agreement auctions with public securities for large amounts.