The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) has given the Naira further lift against other major currencies with its injection of another $250m into various segments of the inter-bank Foreign Exchange market in September 2017.
Figures obtained from the CBN indicate that the Retail Secondary Market Intervention Sales (SMIS) segment of the market received the highest intervention with a total of $100 million, Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) window received a boost of $80 million while the invisibles segment, comprising Business/Personal Travel Allowances, school tuition, medicals, etc. was allocated the sum of $70 million to meet the demands of customers.
Confirming the figures, the Bank’s spokesman, Isaac Okorafor, noted with delight the recent Quarter 2, 2017 Report by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) which indicated that Nigeria has gotten out of recession and hinged part of this success to the regular intervention of the Bank in the forex market, to boost liquidity in the market, ensuring timely execution and settlement for eligible transactions and also make forex available to the real sector and industrial capacities, critical to the Nigerian economy.
The spokesman also reminded the public of the Governor’s prediction few months ago that the Nigerian economy will be out of recession at the end of the third quarter, 2017, which is largely due to the monetary policy stance of the CBN. This has been confirmed by the NBS Report.
It will be recalled that last week, the Naira was given a boost as the CBN injected $297m into the Retail Secondary Market Intervention Sales (SMIS) segment, raising the total intervention for the week to the sum of $547m.