The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) has on Monday injected $457.3 million into the foreign exchange market.

The development forced the parallel market rate to retreat further to N386 per dollar, against N388 per dollar recorded at the close of transactions last week.

This came on the heels of a lull in the foreign exchange market last week when the CBN refrained from the usual market interventions witnessed in the last two months and the single largest intervention in more than four weeks.
The naira closed flat at 386 against the United States dollar on the parallel market on Monday, the same rate it closed on Friday.

This was despite a $457.3m injection into various segments of the forex market by the Central Bank of Nigeria on Monday.
CBN’s Acting Director of Corporate Communications, Isaac Okorafor, had at the weekend reiterated the bank’s commitment to ensuring that there was enough supply of forex to genuine customers in pursuit of rates’ convergence.

A breakdown of the offers indicated that both the spot and forwards segments garnered a total of $267.3 million, while the wholesale segment got $100 million.

Also, the SMEs and invisibles segments, comprising importation of basic items, travel allowances, tuition fees and medicals, got $50 million and $40 million respectively.

Meanwhile, a check on the volume of trading on the investors and exporters in the foreign exchange window in the last three weeks on the FMDQ platform revealed that $600 million had been sold by both the CBN and autonomous sources.

Okorafor noted that the volume of activities in the investors and exporters segment was an indication that they are now being attracted to the financial market and the economy.