Again, CBN Intervenes in FX Market with $195m

Obinna Chima

The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) Monday intervened in the foreign exchange market with a total of $195 million.

A breakdown of this showed that while it offered $100 million in wholesale auction at the interbank foreign exchange market, it also intervened in the Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) and invisible segments, with the sum of $50 million and $45 million, respectively.

Confirming the figures, the CBN Acting Director, Corporate Communications, Mr. Isaac Okorafor, reiterated that 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.

Monday’s sale followed the major intervention, last Friday, to the tune of $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.

Okorafor had said last week that the CBN leadership was quite impressed with 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 continue working on achieving the objective of convergence between the exchange rates at the Nigeria Autonomous Foreign Exchange (NAFEX) and the Bureau-de-Change (BDC) segments of the market, even as he assured stakeholders of proper surveillance of the forex market to guarantee transparency in the sale of foreign exchange.

Okorafor also urged 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.
Meanwhile, the naira hovered at between N360 and N362/$1 in the BDC segment of the market Monday.