BIZ BUZZ: A pop-up booth at the mall

The Bureau of the Treasury (BTr) is bringing its latest Retail Treasury Bond offering (RTB) 32, to TriNoma on Oct. 2 as it marks the program’s silver anniversary and looks to get more Filipinos comfortable with investing.

Last year, the Treasury took a step in that direction when RTBs became available through GCash’s GBonds. This year, it is taking the experience offline and straight to the mall.

That’s the whole tenet of RTBs, after all: bringing bonds closer to the people.

The idea is to make government securities feel a little less intimidating and investing a little more accessible, with visitors able to play games, win freebies, get one-on-one advice from BTr experts and, for those ready to take the plunge, invest on the spot.

All of this is part of the BTr’s push to bring RTBs to a wider pool of small investors, who can put in as little as P5,000, as the government seeks to raise as much as P150 billion in new money from the latest offering.

There’s even a little anniversary math to RTB 32: the 25-year-old program is celebrating with a 2.5-year bond, paying 6.875 percent a year until investors get their money back in April 2029.

Twenty-five years in, the Treasury seems to be taking the message quite literally: if you want more people to buy bonds, sometimes you just have to bring the bonds to where the people are.

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