A whopping $7.6 billion has been injected by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) into the economy to stabilise the value of the naira in the last five months.
This was revealed in the CBN’z monthly economic reports on foreign exchange market developments.
The reports said the CBN intervened in the markets with $1.65bn, $1.39bn and $1.82bn in January, February and March, while the interventions were $1.56bn and $1.18bn in April and May respectively.
The report read, “Total foreign exchange sales to authorised dealers by the bank were $1.18bn, a decrease of 24.4 per cent, below $1.56bn in April.
“A breakdown shows that foreign exchange sales at the Investors and Exporters and interbank/invisible windows decreased by 37.9 per cent and 0.7 per cent to $0.16bn apiece, below their respective levels in the preceding month.
“Similarly, SMIS and matured swap contracts fell by 7.0 per cent and 71.4 per cent to $0.64bn and $0.10bn, respectively, compared to the amounts in April. However, foreign exchange sales at the Small and Medium Enterprises window rose by 8.4 per cent to $0.12bn in the review period.”
The apex bank maintained the official rate of the naira to the dollar at N427.76 at the I&E forex window on its website.
However, at the parallel market, the naira was bought and sold for N690 and N700 on Thursday.
