CBN opens week with $195m forex intervention

The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) on Monday offered $100 million in wholesale auction at the inter-bank foreign exchange market and intervened with the sum of $50 million and $45 million, respectively in the Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) and invisible segments.
The CBN Acting Director, Corporate Communications,Mr. 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.
The Monday’s sale was a follow up to the Friday’s intervention which was $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.
According to Okorafor, the CBN leadership was quite impressed by the positive impact its current foreign exchange management was having on the manufacturing sector, agriculture and economic activities in general across the country.
He said the CBN would not 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 who genuinely required foreign exchange for their transactions to approach their banks, noting that the banks had enough forex to meet the demands for foreign exchange within the time frame stipulated by the CBN.