Government bond turnover fell away from a peak in 2003 but has since recovered and is currently rising on a strong but volatile trend. Turnover of repurchase agreements (repo) continues to increase as more borrowers use them as a financing tool and is now considerably larger than government bond market turnover by investors (Figure 7). Illustrating the relative illiquidity of the government bond market is the low level of traded bonds—in the 12 months to July 2007 only 22 of the 95 bonds traded on more than 100 days and only 8 traded on more than 200 days. (Table 3)
