The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), on Friday, intervened in the retail segment of the interbank forex market selling a total sum of $388.66m to authorized dealers who submitted their bids on Tuesday, May 2, 2017.
A breakdown of the figure, according to Isaac Okoroafor, Acting Director, Corporate Communications Department at the CBN, shows that while $87.885m was for spot sales, $300.8m was sold as forwards.
He explained that the forwards were sold into three tenors of 30, 45 and 60 days respectively; while $100.95m was sold as 30-day forwards; $110.48 million as 45-day forwards and $99.37 as 60-day forwards.
Besides confirming that the CBN continued with its intervention in the Bureau de Change (BDC) segment of the market to meet the needs of low-end users, he restated the apex bank’s resolve to ensuring enough supply of forex to genuine customers and in the process help to sustain liquidity in the market.
With this development, Okoroafor expressed hope that the CBN would move closer still to its objective of convergence of the rates in the interbank and BDC segments.
It will be recalled that the CBN in the course of the week intervened in the wholesale and invisibles segments of the market with amounts valued at over $346m to ease access to foreign exchange by different categories of customers.