The Central Bank of Nigeria, CBN, has auctioned $418 million at N310 to a dollar, to airlines, agriculture, petroleum and raw materials sub sectors.
Isaac Okorafor, acting director, Corporate Communications, CBN, said that the $480 million offered last week was in addition to the $350 million sold as wholesale auction for travel allowance and school fees at the same period.
Okorafor said the CBN would further sustain its intervention through the sale of foreign exchange to all segments of the market, like the interbank and the Bureau de Change segment in the weeks ahead.
“The Bank will sell short tenured forwards of 7 to 30-day maturity to meet demand of manufacturers and all other foreign exchange users. These significant injections of foreign exchange into the market should reassure all foreign exchange users of our determination to continue to meet all legitimate forex demand in the market,” he said.
Despite the CBN interventions by pumping dollars into the forex market and the attendant appreciation of the naira, the local currency has in the last two weeks depreciated again against the dollar. This was attributed to alleged hoarding of the dollar by commercial banks, and insufficient supply to other stakeholders.
But the CBN has vowed to penalise any bank that refuses to sell forex to customers, and has since increased the supply of forex to BDCs from 8,000 dollars to 10,000 dollars per week.
The Naira currently sells at N405 to a dollar in the parallel market. It is not yet clear whether or not the recent gains of the naira will be sustained or return to the old regime of wild fluctuation.