Nigeria’s central bank (CBN) moved to stabilise the country’s foreign exchange market with an intervention of $200 million at the inter-bank sector of the market.
The intervention was made in order to meet the requests of customers whose demand had exceeded what would ordinarily have been available.
The statement made available to businessamlive,com showed a explained that the CBN offered the sum of $100million to authorized dealers in the wholesale segment of the market, just as it allocated the sum of $55 million each to the Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) segment and the Invisibles segment to meet needs of tuition fees, medical payments and Basic Travel Allowance (BTA), among others.
Isaac Okorafor, CBN acting director in charge of the Corporate Communications Department (CCD), said the continued intervention by the bank was in line with the governor’s commitment to ensure liquidity in the market as well as reduce pressure on the naira.
Okorafor said that the CBN was pleased with the current market situation brought about by policies it had put in place to check forex speculators, round-trippers, and rent-seekers. According to him, these policies had helped to stabilize the exchange rate in addition to the establishment of the Investors-Exporters window, which had increased fx supply with over $20 billion inflow since its inception.
According to him, the bank will not relent in its effort to manage the country’s forex with a view to reducing its import bills and checking any haemorhage of its foreign reserves.
The CBN, in its last intervention on Tuesday, April 10, 2018 intervened to the tune of $210 million to cater for requests in the various segments of the forex market.
Meanwhile, the naira continued its stability in the FOREX market, exchanging at an average of N360/$1 in the BDC segment of the market on Wednesday, April 18, 2018.
