By Dipo Olowookere
The sum of $210 million was made available to authorised traders in the foreign exchange market in the country on Tuesday by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN).
This was part of efforts by the apex bank to prevent scarcity of the foreign currency at the market for those who genuinely need forex to complete their transactions.
A statement issued on Tuesday by the Director of Corporate Communications Department at the CBN, Mr Isaac Okorafor, disclosed that the $210 million was injected into Nigerian Inter-Bank Foreign Exchange market at the close of business on Tuesday.
He explained that the injection was part of the bank’s commitment to continue to boost inter-bank foreign exchange market, to ensure stability and availability to meet customers demand.
According to him, last week, the central bank similarly injected the sum of $284.2 million and CNY36 million into the Retail Secondary Market Intervention Sales, SMIS, and in the spot and short tenured forwards segments of the foreign exchange market.
Mr Okorafor for the Tuesday’s intervention, the CBN made available the sum of $100 million to authorised dealers in the wholesale sector of the market, with the Small and Medium Enterprise (SMEs), and the invisible segments getting $55 million each.
In the statement, the CBN spokesman disclosed that the management of the apex bank was particularly pleased with the prevailing stability in the Nigerian foreign exchange market, assuring that more efforts would be made to sustain the stability.
Adedapo Adesanya