In its resolve to guarantee liquidity in the market, the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) injected $355.43 million into the Retail Secondary Market Intervention Sales (SMIS) on Friday, March 9.
The figure was to meet requests in the agricultural, airlines, petroleum products and raw materials and machinery sectors.
Mr. Isaac Okorafor, the Bank’s Acting Director, Corporate Communications Department, who confirmed the figures, reiterated that the CBN interventions in the market were aimed at sustaining liquidity in the market as well as boosting production and trade.
Okorafor said with increasing accretion to the country’s reserve, the Bank is in a much better position to ensure liquidity in the inter-bank sector of the market and as such would continue to intervene in order to drive growth in the economy and guarantee stability in the market, particularly now that the economy had gained steam due to an upsurge in the non-oil sector.
With the rates closing at N360/$1 on Friday, March 9, 2018, Mr. Okorafor hoped that the bank’s forex intervention underscored its determination to maintain the country’s external reserves in order to safeguard the international value of the Naira.
Recall that the CBN, in its last SMIS in February 2018, injected $321.4 million in the inter-bank market, and also intervened in the inter-bank Foreign Exchange Market to the tune of $210,000,000, comprising $100million for the wholesale segment and $55 million for both the Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) and invisible segment.
(NTA)
