CBN Injects Another $190m Into Forex Market

The Central Bank of Nigeria, CBN, on Monday sold another $190 million to meet customers’ requests in various forex segments.
The apex bank which injected $831.5 million into the interbank forex market last week said it would soon introduce a new forex retail option.

Speaking on the disbursement, the acting Director, Corporate Communications, Mr Isaac Okorafor, said in a statement in Abuja that the apex bank sold $100 million to authorised forex dealers through the interbank market, while $50 million was offered to Small and Medium Enterprises window.

Accordingly, the invisibles segment was appropriated $45 million to meet demands for business/personal travel allowances, school tuition and medicals.

The CBN reaffirmed its commitment to the ongoing forex policy and insist on transparency to guarantee stability in the foreign exchange market.

Since the Investors and Exporters forex window was launched in April, the CBN has aided transactions by contributing 30 percent of the total forex volume traded on the window, boosting total volume of trade to $2.2 billion.

This has helped increase forex liquidity and subsequently improved consumer prices which measure inflation to 12 months low of 16.25 percent in May from 17.24 percent in April.

Also, in an effort to further reduce inflation rate, the CBN last week announced a plan to mop up N200.32 billion from the banking system through Open Market Operation.

However, the Statistician General of the Federation, Dr. Yemi Kale said the economy will be out of recession in 2018, provided oil prices do not collapse and Niger Delta remains stable.

While his projection is more conservative than other experts, the statistician said; “Inflationary slowdown does not mean prices are coming down. Inflation by definition is always a rise in price. All we are saying is that the increase is decelerating.”

“Before it rose by 100 percent, but this time it went up by 50 per cent. As such, having double-digit inflation figure is still a huge problem. The fact that it went down from over 18 per cent to 17 per cent and now to 16 per cent shows improvement. But i can tell you 16 percent is not good,” he said.

The Naira appreciated to N364 against the dollar from N370 it traded last week.