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Agricultural, airlines, petroleum and raw materials on Friday received the sums of $285.7 million forex allocation from the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) based on requests put forward by their respective banks.
The CBN on Friday, October 27, 2017, injected a total of $285,759,449.10 into the Inter-Bank Foreign Exchange Market to meet requests in these four sectors of the economy.
Isaac Okorafor, acting director, corporate communications department, CBN confirmed the figures and said the releases underlined the high levels of transparency of the Bank in Foreign Exchange Management.
According to him, the CBN would continue to play its role in easing the foreign exchange pressure on manufacturing and agricultural sectors through sales under the new flexible Foreign Exchange regime.
It will be recalled that the Central Bank of Nigeria has consistently injected funds into in the interbank foreign exchange market to ensure liquidity, thereby easing pressure on the local tender currency.
Meanwhile, the naira continued to maintain its stability in the FOREX market, exchanging at an average of N360/$1 in the BDC segment of the market on Friday, 27, and 2017.
Last week the local currency appreciated week-on-week in most foreign exchange market segments. The Naira appreciated against the U.S. Dollar at the Investors & Exporters Forex Window (I&E FXW) by 0.08% to N360.04/USD while it strengthened by 0.23% to N329.25/USD at the interbank market (NIFEX). This was amid injections by the CBN worth USD 195 million into the foreign exchange market of which USD 100 million was allocated to Wholesale (SMIS), USD50 million was allocated to Small and Medium Scale Enterprises and USD45 million was sold for invisibles.
In the same week, dated forward contracts at the interbank OTC segment mostly appreciated amid increase in the foreign exchange reserves – external reserves increased week-on-week by 0.63 percent to USD33.62 billion as at Wednesday, October 25, 2017. The 1 month, 2 months, 3 months and 12 months contracts appreciated w-o-w by 0.03%, 0.08%, 0.12% and 0.93% to close at N366.06/USD, N372.00/USD, N378.24/USD and N423/USD respectively.
Analysts at Cowry Asset Management retained their stable outlook for the exchange rate amid sustained stability in global crude oil prices which should result in further build-up in foreign reserves as well as CBN’s continued intervention in the various segments of the interbank foreign exchange market.
HOPE MOSES-ASHIKE
