It has been a year since the launch of the first Singapore Savings Bonds (SSB) in Oct 2015. How have the interest rates of SSBs changed in this 1 year and how have they performed relative to the more conventional government bonds, namely, the Singapore Government Securities (SGS)?

Fig. 1 below shows the 10-year interest rates of SSBs (red line). The interest rates are computed as the average of the benchmark 10-Year SGS interest rates (blue line) over the previous month. (Note: There is always a confusion over the "month" of the SSB. The SSB announced in Oct is issued in Nov and based on the average rates of the 10-Year SGS benchmark bond in Sep.). As you can see from Fig. 1, interest rates have been on a downward trend, reflecting the eagerness of central banks around the world to lower interest rates, to even negative levels in ...