CBPP3 registered a leap in buying last week, with gross Eurosystem covered bond purchases at their highest since mid-July and back in line with the year’s weekly average. The increase came mostly on the back of the reopening of the primary market, with secondary buying in line with the recent average.

This comes as the third anniversary of the unveiling of the third covered bond purchase programme (CBPP3) nears; the programme was first announced on 4 September 2014, before buying commenced on 20 October of that year.

ECB figures released on Monday show that in the week to last Friday, the CBPP3 portfolio grew Eu1.141bn, from Eu226.570bn to Eu227.711bn, in the week to last Friday. Portfolio redemption figures released yesterday (Tuesday) afternoon show that no CBPP3 holdings matured last week.

This is up substantially from gross and net buying of Eu428m in the previous week, and is the highest gross purchase figure since the week commencing 10 July. It is also in line with the average weekly gross purchases this year of some Eu1.12bn.

Florian Eichert, head of covered bond and SSA research at Crédit Agricole, noted that as settlements under the ECB’s public sector purchase programme (PSPP) and corporate sector purchase programme (CSPP) increased only marginally last week compared with the previous week, the share of CBPP3 settlements in overall asset purchase programme (APP) settlements jumped from 4% to 11%. This, he said, is the first time the CBPP3’s contribution to weekly APP growth has been in double-digits since January.

Last week was the first week in which CBPP3-eligible benchmark issuance settled for over a month. Analysts estimated that Eu600m-Eu660m of last week’s gross purchases were bought on the primary market, implying average secondary market purchases of around Eu96m-Eu108m per day.

This is up from an average of Eu85.6m per day last week, but closer to the daily average of around Eu102m since the start of August.