By InvestAdvocate

Lagos (INVESTADVOCATE)-The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) has directed a meeting of foreign exchange officers of Banks, authorised dealers, the Nigeria Customs Service, National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC) and the Standard Organisation of Nigeria (SON) on developments in the forex market.

This is contained in a circular dated January 27, 2016 and signed by Olakanmi Gbadamosi, director, Trade and Exchange at the apex Bank.

“The meeting shall afford participants the opportunity to discuss developments in the forex market in the last quarter of 2015 and offer contributions in charting the direction for 2016,” the circular said.

The meeting scheduled to hold in Lagos on Thursday, February 4, is coming on the heels of the support of President Muhammadu Buhari that the naira will not be devalued.

“I don’t think it is healthy for us to have the naira devalued further. That’s why we are getting the central bank to make modifications in terms of making foreign exchange available to essential services, industries, spare parts, essential raw materials and so on — but things like toothpicks and rice, Nigeria can produce enough of those,” President Buhari said.

The CBN had imposed progressively stiff rules on access to foreign exchange in a bid to save the naira, which has been sliding since the slump in global crude prices last year.

According to Cordros daily market update as at February 1, in the interbank market the value of the local currency depreciated against all of the currency pairs tracked.

The naira compared to the dollar, pounds sterling and euro weakened by 0.05 percent, 0.50 percent and 0.52 percent to trade at N199.05, N284.74 and N216.63 respectively.

At the parallel market, the local currency exchanged for the greenback, pounds sterling and euro for N304.00, N422.00 and N322.00 respectively.