Following Tuesday’s assurances by the Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), Godwin Emefiele, that the bank would continue to intervene in the foreign exchange market, the apex bank yesterday auctioned $185.86 million at the retail Secondary Market Intervention Sales (SMIS).
The bank’s acting Director in charge of Corporate Communications, Isaac Okorafor, while confirming the auction sale, disclosed that out of the auctioned amount, only $3.14 million was sold as spots, while the sum of $182.72 million was sold as forwards.
Okorafor further explained that the overall picture of the inter-bank forex market was that of optimism, going by the level of access now being enjoyed by different categories of customers in both the wholesale and retail segments of the market.
Recall that the CBN Governor, Emefiele, while assuring Nigerians of the imminent end of the current recession in 2017, at the end of his meeting with the leadership of the Senate on Tuesday, April 25, 2017, declared that the bank will continue its relentless intervention in the forex market.
Emefiele hinged the optimism of the CBN on the accretion to the country’s foreign reserve, which he said currently hovered above the $31 billion mark.