CBN restores calm in Forex Market

The efforts of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) aimed at ensuring stability in the foreign exchange market may have started yielding results as all the segments of the market are now awashed with liquidity surfeit.

Indications of excessive liquidity in the market emerged on Thursday last week when operators could only pick a little over $39 million out of the $100 million offered for bid by the apex bank.
“This is a good ddvelopment and we hope CBN would be able to sustain this positive trend,” says Friday Ameh, energy analyst.
According to market analysts, With this development, the Naira is set to firm up against major currencies like the Dollar and pound sterling during the week.
Already investigations mbe the Metrobusinessnews.com showed that ther greenback was exchnaging below N400 at most parallel market operators visited on Sunday.
For instance, at the popular Allen Avenue, the naira was exchnaging between N380/N390 per dollar.
It will be recalled that the Central Bank of Nigeria last week opened a special  Forex window for Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) to enable entrepreneurs import eligible finished and semi-finished items not exceeding $20,000 for an enterprise per quarter.

 That was in addition to the special intervention in the Bureau De’ Change BDC) segment of the foreign exchange market which resulted in each operator accessing $20,000 as against the earlier stipulated $10,000 per week.

According to the CBN spokesman, Isaac Okorafor, “the special interventions were necessitated by its findings that a large number of SMEs were being crowded out of the forex space by large firms and also service genuine demand for invincible like tuition fees, medical a and personal/basic travel allowance. “