By Peter OBIORA InvestAdvocate
Lagos (INVESTADVOCATE) – The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) said on Friday the interbank market rate closed at N198.50/$1 at the end of the day’s transactions compared to N197.10/$1 it closed on Thursday.
A Reuters report quoted a major bank dealer as saying that the CBN intervened in a special forex sale on Friday.
According to the report, two (2) large sales were done at 198.50 naira to the dollar, totalling $40.8 million based on Thomson Reuter’s data.
This is coming on the heels of delay in the nation’s foreign exchange market until 10 a.m on Friday to allow dealers to submit demand for dollars to the CBN.
The intervention of the central bank with dollar sales in the forex market was to halt the naira’s slide to a record low and to pump a maximum amount of liquidity into the market and reduce dollar demand.
“The currency wasn’t sold at the regulator’s typical auction rate, but a rate closer to what the interbank market is trading at present,” a Bloomberg report quoted David Adepoju, president of the Financial Market Dealers Association.
The report further affirmed that the selloff deepened this week, pushing the naira to a record low, after elections scheduled for Saturday were postponed by six weeks. The Abuja-based central bank sells dollars to banks on Mondays and Wednesdays at a rate of five (5) percent above or below 168 naira per dollar, the report added.
It said the currency gained 0.7 percent to 204.05 per dollar as of 3:07 p.m. in Lagos, reversing an earlier decline. The naira lost 5.2 percent over the past five days, the most on a weekly basis since December 2008.
