By: Ajibade Morakinyo
The Central Bank of Nigeria has increased the liquidity in the foreign exchange market by releasing additional $180m for settlement of various transactions.
This was disclosed by the Acting Director, Corporate Communications Department, CBN, Mr. Isaac Okoroafor, on Monday.
According to him, “while the sum of $100m was released into the wholesale forwards segment of the market, additional $80m was provided to banks specifically for the settlement of dollar demands for school fees, medicals and Personal Travel Allowance, among others.
He stated that the apex bank’s commitment to providing enough forex for legitimate businesses remained unshaken, noting that the bank would do everything possible to ensure the steady supply of forex to the market.
However, the CBN had maintained that much of the dollar demands had been a bubble created by speculators and hoarders of the greenback. This will be the third time the apex bank is intervening in the forex market within a week.
During the first intervention last week, the CBN offered $500m for sale to banks, but not all of them provided enough naira backing to pay fully for their respective bid amounts.
In the second intervention, a total of $221.3m was released by the apex bank to 16 banks. Moreover, the CBN had expressed optimism that its wholesale intervention would substantially ease the foreign exchange pressure on visible and invisible needs of customers.
Okoroafor gave an assurance that the CBN would continue to make interventions, based on qualified bids from banks on the requests of their customers, and the CBN was more than ever ready to support the inter-bank market, by ensuring liquidity and transparency to guarantee efficiency in the forex market.”
Therefore, he encouraged all market participants to assist in ensuring that the new measures put in place by the CBN guaranteed the stability of the financial market, as well as the growth and development of the economy to the benefit of all Nigerians.