CBN injects $298.71m into retail market

The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) says it has made another intervention of 298.71million dollars in the retail Secondary Market Intervention Sales (SMIS). The bank’s Director, Corporate Communications Department, Mr Isaac Okorafor, disclosed this in a statement in Abuja on Friday.

Okorafor said that the bank had also injected 39.69 million Chinese Yuan (CNY) in the spot and short-tenured forwards segment of the inter-bank foreign market. He explained that the interventions in U.S. dollars, just as in previous transactions, were to meet requests in the agricultural and raw materials sectors.

He added that in the same vein, the transactions in Chinese Yuan were for Renminbi-denominated Letters of Credit.
Okorafor expressed the satisfaction of the bank’s management with the stability in the foreign exchange market, adding that it would continue to make necessary interventions to ensure liquidity in the Nigerian market.

He said that the bank was further encouraged by the improved inflow of foreign exchange, which had kept the exchange rate around the N360/$1 for close to 30 months. The director urged Nigerians to continue to support the policies of CBN aimed at boosting the production capacity of local industries as well as creating jobs for citizens.

He assured that the apex bank would remain committed to ensuring that all the sectors of the foreign exchange market continued to enjoy access to the needed foreign exchange. The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that a dollar exchanged at N360 to the dollar while CNY1 exchanged at N55 at the Bureau de Change (BDC) segment of the foreign exchange market on Friday.