Boosts Forex Liquidity With Fresh $180m

Perhaps encouraged by the positive reactions of the Naira to last week’s intervention in the nation’s foreign exchange market, the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), on Monday warned foreign hoarders and speculators to cut their loss by selling their stack of foreign exchange before it becomes too late.
In a statement on Monday, the CBN lamented that much of the dollar demand had been a bubble created by speculators and hoarders of the greenback.
The warning, according to a statement by Isaac Okorafor, its director said the warning had become necessary in view of the apex bank’s injection of fresh liquidity totaling $100m into the wholesale forwards segment of the market.
It also pumped an additional $80m into the banks specifically for the settlement of dollar demand for school fees, medicals and Personal Travel Allowance (PTA), among others.
Okoroafor expressed the apex bank’s unshaken commitment to providing enough forex for legitimate businesses, reiterating that it would do “everything possible” to ensure the steady supply of forex to the market.
It will be recalled that efforts by the CBN in making available large amounts of forex to the market has led to the appreciation of the Naira by over N85 in less than one week. There are fears in the market that the local currency may well be on a permanent journey to its natural value put by some analysts at less than N300 to the dollar.