By Modupe Gbadeyanka
On Wednesday, September 20, 2017, the 15th OTC FX Futures contract, NGUS SEP 20 2017, with a notional amount of $383.30 million matured and settled on FMDQ; bringing the total value of matured contracts so far on the OTC Exchange from year-to-date to circa $3.33 billion, and over $7 billion worth of OTC FX Futures contracts traded since inception.
The contract, which was valued against the Nigerian Autonomous Foreign Exchange Fixing (NAFEX) Spot rate as published by FMDQ on September 20, 2017, had its associated clearing/settlement effected by the Nigeria Inter-Bank Settlement System Plc (NIBSS), in line with the FMDQ OTC FX Futures Market Operational Standards Consistent with its treatment for the previous maturities (July
2016–August 2017), the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) introduced a new contract, NGUS SEP 28 2017, for $1 billion at $/N361.41 to replace the matured contract and refreshed its quotes on the existing 1-to 11-month contracts.
It is expected that the efforts of the CBN towards resuscitating the vibrancy of the nation’s FX market will yield the desired results and invariably allow for the potential of the OTC FX Futures market to be fully maximised by businesses, investors, governments etc with FX exposures.
