Naira appreciates as CBN injects another $457.3m into FX market

The naira appreciated to N383 against the United States dollar at the parallel market as the Central Bank of Nigeria continues to supply dollars into the foreign exchange market.

National Daily gathered that the local currency closed at N383/dollar on Monday at the parallel market, gaining seven points from the N390/dollar it went for last week.
According to financial and currency experts, the naira’s outlook remains stable in the near term as the regulator steps up efforts to improve dollar liquidity and achieve exchange rate convergence.

The naira firmed to about 305.60 to the dollar on the interbank market on Friday, up from 305.1/dollar on Thursday.

The Global Economist, Renaissance Capital, Charles Robertson, described the official rate of the naira as a “fair value”, suggesting that the value might need to be weaker to attract foreign investor into the country.

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According to him, exchange rate issues are making Nigeria underperform among its peers in East Africa.

He, however, said the country would make a significant improvement in ease of doing business and corruption data over the next one year owing to recent positive steps by the Federal Government.

Meanwhile the Central Bank of Nigeria has injected another $457.3m into FX market.

According to the apex bank spokesman, Mr. Isaac Okorafor in a statement in Abuja, both the spot and forwards segments garnered 267.3 million dollars, while the wholesale segment got 100 million dollars.

Okorafor said the Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) and invisibles segments comprising basic travel allowance, tuition fee and medical got 50 million dollars and 40 million dollars respectively.

He said that the volume of activities being recorded in the Investors and Exporters forex segment was indicative of the fact that investors were attracted to the Nigerian financial market and the economy in general.

The CBN had supplied over $380m into the forex market a week ago.

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The CBN has been intervening aggressively since February to try to narrow the spread between the official and black market rates and has sold more than $4bn.