In line with its resolve to sustain liquidity in the nation’s foreign exchange market, the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) says it injected $355.43m into the Retail Secondary Market Intervention Sales (SMIS) on Friday, March 9, 2018.
This, according to Isaac Okoraform Acting Director in its Corporate Communications Department, was to meet requests in the agricultural, airlines, petroleum products and raw materials and machinery sectors.
He reiterated that the sustained interventions in the market were aimed at also boosting production and trade, adding that with increasing accretion to the country’s reserve, the CBN is in a better position to ensure liquidity in the inter-bank sector of the market.
Okorafor stressed that the apex bank would continue to intervene in order to drive growth in the economy and guarantee stability in the market, particularly now that the economy had gained steam due to an upsurge in the non-oil sector.
With the rates closing at N360/$1 on Friday, Okorafor, expressed confidence that the forex intervention underscored the CBN’s determination to maintain the country’s external reserves in order to safeguard the international value of the Naira.
It will be recalled that the CBN, in its last SMIS in February 2018, injected the sum of $321.4m in the interbank market, while also intervening in the inter-bank Foreign Exchange Market to the tune of $210m, comprising of $100m for the wholesale segment and $55m for both the Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) and invisibles segment.
Meanwhile, turnover in the I&E window fell sharply by 60.97% to $539.9m with the bulk of trades still within the NGN360-NGN369 band.
USD/NGN exchange rate remained flat at NGN362 in the parallel market as it was throughout the week, while it weakened by 0.06% to NGN360.32 in the I&E FX window.