Forex Intervention: CBN injects $325.56m, CNY14m into Retail SMIS

Iru Leonard

The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) on Friday, October 18, 2019, made an intervention of $325.5million in the retail Secondary Market Intervention Sales (SMIS) and CNY 14million in the spot and short tenored forwards segment of the inter-bank foreign market.

This was disclosed by the Director, Corporate Communications Department, Isaac Okorafor, who revealed that the intervention was for agricultural machineries and industrial raw materials. The Chinese Yuan, on the other hand, was for Renminbi denominated Letters of Credit.

Mr. Okorafor further expressed optimism that the stability in the forex market would be sustained and therefore assured the public, particularly genuine foreign exchange users of the commitment of the apex bank towards ensuring adequate liquidity in the market.

It will be recalled that the Bank on Tuesday, October 15, 2019, offered authorized dealers in the wholesale segment of the market the sum of $100million, while the Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) and the invisibles segments each received the sum of $55 million.

Meanwhile, $1 exchanged for N358 at the Bureau de Change (BDC) segment of the foreign exchange market, while CNY1 exchanged at N48.

It could be recalled, that the CNY1 initially exchanged for N53. So there is an appreciation of the Naira by N5.