National Wire About Nigerians, Nigerian Business and Other Stories
The Central Bank of Nigeria onThursday said it would on Friday release the sum of $100m to authorised dealersto meet the requests of genuine customers in the interbank segment of theforeign exchange market.
The release ofthe forex, according to the apex bank, followed bids from authorised dealersfor the amount.
The CBN Director, CorporateCommunications Department, Mr Isaac Okoroafor, while confirming the release ina statement said no intervention was made on Thursday in the market.
The statementread in part, “the Central Bank of Nigeria has offered and received bids for$100m from authorized dealers in the interbank market to meet the requests ofgenuine customers.
“The sales willbe settled on Friday, March 17, 2017 and no intervention was made by the Bank to meet requests for invisibles onThursday.”
Okorafor reiterated that the CBN wouldcontinue to make necessaryinterventions in the interbank market to meet all legitimate transaction- based foreign exchange demands bycustomers.
The apex bank hadin its last auction sale offered $150m to the interbank market with the highest bid rate at N335 to a dollar while themarginal rate was N320 to the dollar.
The CBN onThursday said it had sold more Treasury bills than originally planned at anauction after it lured demand for one-year debt with yields above inflation.
The bank raisedN253.8bn at an auction on Wednesday, N40bn more than it had offered to sell.
It offered theone-year bill at 18.55 per cent to raise N166.3bn, against a yield of 18.49 percent at its last auction and higher than February’s inflation rate of 17.78 percent.
The central bankhas been selling bills with yields below inflation in recent months to curbborrowing costs as it aims to fund half of this year’s forecast budget deficitof N2.36tn ($7.50bn) through the domestic debt market.
Yields on thesix-month bill were unchanged from the last sale at 17.20 per cent to fetchN48.5bn, while a N39bn bill due in three month was sold 13.60 per cent against13.65 per cent previously.
Total demandstood at N216.38bn against N312.44bn at the last sale.
On Thursday, theDebt Management Office also issued more bonds than it originally planned at anauction after slowing inflation rate helped it offer debt at lower yields.
