The Central Bank of Nigeria, Friday, flooded the forex market with its sale of $331.41million to the banks and different players in the Retail Secondary Market Intervention Sales(SMIS), in order to ensure liquidity in the system and put a stop to the activities of speculators that put pressure on the country’s reserves.
According to the Bank’s Acting Director, Corporate Communications, Mr. Isaac Okorafor, companies likely to benefit in this latest intervention are those in the agricultural, petroleum products, raw materials and machinery sectors.
He therefore advised every customer requiring foreign exchange to approach their respective banks with relevant documents to make formal requests, stressing that the authorized dealers had enough supply to meet every legitimate request.
Reiterating the assurances of the CBN Governor, Godwin Emefiele, he said the Bank was buoyant enough to meet the foreign exchange requests of various customers cut across the different segments of the market.
It will be recalled, Emefiele had last Monday paid unscheduled visits to some banks in Abuja, to monitor the extent of compliance with the CBN directive to deposit money banks (DMBs) in the country to buy and sell foreign exchange over-the-counter to traveling customers and non-customers of banks provided they present relevant and valid travel documents.
The CBN in that directive also mandated all Bureau de Change (BDCs) to henceforth to access forex from the CBN, at least thrice weekly, failing which the CBN could review their licenses.
It will be recalled that the Bank, on Wednesday, May 30, 2018 offered the sum of $100 million to authorised dealers in the wholesale segment of the market, just as the Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) segment and the invisibles window each received $55 million.
Meanwhile, the naira traded at an average of N362 to the dollar on the BDC segment of the market across major cities in the country.