From Uche Usim, Abuja
The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) on yesterday pumped additional $81.2 million in the invisibles and Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) segments.
This follows last Friday’s injection of $389 million into the retail segment of the forex market,
A breakdown of the interventions indicates that the bank provided the sum of $44 million to meet customers’ requests for invisibles such as Basic Travel Allowances (BTA), Personal Travel Allowances (PTA), medical bills and tuition fees, among others.
The Acting Director, Corporate Communications at the CBN, Isaac Okorafor, confirmed the intervention, adding that the SMEs segment also received a boost of $37.2 million.
According to him, “the bank remains committed to ensuring that there is enough supply of forex to genuine customers to achieve the goal of forex rates convergence”.
While expressing satisfaction with the current stability in the forex market, Okorafor reiterated his confidence in the ability of the CBN to sustain its interventions in the market.
It will be recalled that the CBN on Friday, May 5, 2017, sold a total sum of $389 million to authorized dealers in the retail sector of the market as spot and forwards. Of the sum, $87.885 was for spot sales, while $300.8 million was sold as forwards in three tenors of 30, 45 and 60 days, respectively.
Meanwhile, the Federal Government on Monday offered for subscription two-year savings bond at 13.18 per cent and three-year savings bond at 14.18 per cent, the Debt Management Office (DMO) has said.
According to the offer circular derived from the DMO website, the two-year bond will be due in May 2019, while the three-year bond will be due in May 2020.
It, however, did not state how much was offered, but added that the maximum subscription was N50 million at N1 ,000 per unit, subject to minimum subscription of N5,000 and in multiples of N1,000.
The DMO said that the bond was fully backed by the full faith and credit of the Federal Government, with quarterly coupon payments to bondholders.
The savings bond issuance is expected to help finance the nation’s budget deficit.