From Uche Usim, Abuja
The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) ended July with another $195 million injection into various segments of the foreign exchange market as part of its strategies to stabilize exchange rate.
A breakdown of yesterday’s disbursement shows that $100 million was channeled into wholesale auction at the inter-bank market as the Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) and invisible segments, got $50 million and $45 million, respectively.
Confirming the figures, the CBN Acting Director, Corporate Communications, Isaac Okorafor, said the bank’s intervention was in line with its commitment to sustain liquidity in the market to meet genuine requests as well as deepen flexibility in the foreign exchange market.
Monday’s sale follows the major intervention, last Friday, to the tune of $462,336,426.74, comprising $267,336,426.74 for the Retail Secondary Market Intervention Sales (SMIS), $100,000,000 for wholesale interventions, $50,000,000 for the SMEs forex window and $45,000,000 for invisibles.
Okorafor had said last week that the CBN leadership was quite impressed by the positive impact its current foreign exchange management effort was having on the manufacturing sector, agriculture and economic activities in general across the country.
He said the CBN would continue working on achieving the objective of convergence between the exchange rates at the Nigeria Autonomous Foreign Exchange (NAFEX) and the Bureau-de-Change segments of the market, even as he assured proper surveillance of the forex market to guarantee transparency in the sale of foreign exchange.
Okorafor also encouraged those with genuine request for foreign exchange for their transactions to approach their banks, noting that banks have enough forex to meet the demands within the time frame stipulated by the CBN.
Meanwhile, the naira hovered at between N360 and N362/$1 in the BDC segment of the market on Monday.