July 27, 2016/FICAN
As part of efforts to enhance capacity of reporting the new foreign exchange structure, the Finance Correspondents Association of Nigeria (FICAN) has concluded plans to organise series of training sessions for its members.
The first edition of the series of programme on the foreign exchange market is expected to hold this Saturday, July 30th, at the FICAN secretariat in Onipanu, Lagos. A financial market analyst at Ecobank Nigeria Limited, Mr. Olakunle Ezun will be the facilitator of the programme.
A statement from the association explained that Ezun is expected to take members through all the numbers on the FMDQ Daily summary which contains activities on the bond, treasury bills, foreign exchange, Nigerian Interbank Offered Rates (NIBOR), among others.
“The facilitator is also expected to provide FICAN members the opportunity to better under the various structures of the interbank market as well as how to effectively report the OTC FX Futures and forward market.
“We enjoin all members of the association to take part in this exercise in our effort to further improving reporting of activities in Nigeria’s financial market. This training is particularly pertinent as it will help improve knowledge of our members and also effectively deepen understanding of key issues in the foreign exchange market. It is also a build-up on previous capacity development initiatives that the association had embarked on,” the statement added.
The Central Bank of Nigeria last month introduced new guidelines for trading on the interbank market. The policy allows the exchange rate of the naira to be determined by the market forces of demand and supply, as against the previous pegged rate system.
Under the new arrangement, selected commercial banks act as FX Primary dealers. Part of the objectives of the new framework, which included the introduction of the naira-settled Over-the-Counter (OTC) FX Futures trading, was to discourage people from front-loading or hoarding forex due to uncertainty.
The central bank also cleared the backlog of matured letters of credits. The new forex framework allows the market to operate as a single market structure through the interbank/autonomous window, while the exchange rate is market-driven using the Thomson-Reuters Order Matching System as well as the Conversational Dealing Book.
