Home BUSINESS BANKING & FINANCE CBN Sells $331.41 Million To Players In Retail Secondary Market

CBN Sells $331.41 Million To Players In Retail Secondary Market

The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) has once more sold a total of $331.41 million to players in different sectors in the Retail Secondary Market Intervention Sales (SMIS).

The sale came closely on the heels of the apex bank’s intervention in the wholesale segment of the market last week Wednesday, when it pumped the sum of $210 million into the inter-bank forex market.

The CBN’s Acting Director, Corporate Communications, Isaac Okorafor who confirmed the news of the sale, said that companies in the agricultural, airlines, petroleum products and raw materials and machinery sectors were the beneficiaries of the intervention.

Okorafor said that the CBN continued to make interventions in the forex market in order to guard against illiquidity and checkmate actions of speculators that could mount pressure on the country’s reserves.

The bank’s chief information strategist said that the Bank is buoyant enough to meet the foreign exchange requests of various customers cut across the different segments of the market.

He charged 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.

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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 also mandated all Bureau de Change (BDCs) to henceforth 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 authorized 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, today, Friday, exchanged at an average of N361/$1 in the BDC segment of the market across major cities in the country.