By Adewale Sanyaolu with agency reports
The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), has announced plans to begin the sales of dollars to fuel importers, airlines and manufacturers in a bid to offset backlog of matured foreign exchange obligations.
The bank said it will offer dollar forwards to be delivered within two months while the “Authorised dealers’ accounts with the CBN will be debited in full for the naira equivalent of the dollar bid amount on a spot basis.
Though, the apex bank did not specify the amount of dollars to be sold, it declared that the CBN will settle the bids through forward settlements of two months.
It is believed that the intervention of CBN would assist fuel importers meet demand for matured letters of credit.
The country consumes 45 million litres of petrol a day, or roughly 280,000 barrels, which will require the market to provide some $18 million a day.
Importers cover about 30 per cent of this, with the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) covering the rest, which is a big strain on the market for dollars.
One of the marketers’ associations told Daily Sun that many of the traders had continued to depend on the supply from the NNPC as they could not access dollars to import.
“I know a few of the marketers are still importing directly, but not as much as we would have loved to see. A good number of them are still depending on the NNPC cargoes. We are definitely not importing as much as we should,” he said. It was not clear at what rate the central bank would sell the dollars to marketers. In May 2016, the government agreed a deal with international oil companies in the country to sell their dollars directly to fuel importers to end months of scarcity partly caused by currency shortages after it hiked fuel prices by 67 per cent, using an exchange rate of N285 per dollar.
Though, CBN has been selling dollars on the official market in an attempt to narrow the spread with the black market exchange rate of the naira, it was still quoted at 395 to the dollar on the black market on Tuesday, against 390 a dollar on Monday.
The naira closed at 306.25 to the dollar on Tuesday, compared with 306.30 the previous day.