This is after the central bank had injected a total of $195 million to the wholesale, SMEs and invisibles segments of the market last week.
A breakdown of the latest release revealed that while a total of $100 million was offered to authorised dealers in the wholesale window, the Small and Medium Enterprises, SMEs, window was allocated the sum of $50 million, even as those seeking forex for the purpose of BTA/PTA, tuition and medical bills among other invisibles got $45 million.
The naira recorded a marginal gain on Monday, closing averagely at 362 per the United States, U.S, dollar in the parrarel market up from 363 on Sunday.
The local currency has been hovering between 363/dollar and 370/dollar as the Central Bank of Nigeria continues to supply foreign exchange into the market.
While confirming these figures, CBN’s Acting Director of Corporate Communications, Isaac Okorafor explained that the continued intervention of the apex bank was geared towards strengthening the international value of the naira, while ensuring accessibility to the U.S. dollar by customers who required it for genuine purposes.
Meanwhile, in a bid to ameliorate the challenges in returning naira to banks for unutilised foreign exchange, FX, the CBN has released the rule for addressing the situation and improving on the current settlement processes.
This was made known in a circular entitled: “Unutilised FX Returned to the CBN for SMIS Wholesale and Retail Interventions,” which was posted on the CBN website on Monday.
This decision was informed by incessant complaints from Deposit Money Banks, DMBs, over the delay in getting naira value for unututilised portions of foreign exchange repatriated to the CBN.
To this end, banks were required to batch all unutilised foreign exchange returned to CBN per session/auction with effect from 26th of June, 2017.
The circular reads further, “In other words, where FX was purchased from CBN from a particular session, all unutilised portion of the session should be batched and forwarded to the CBN for settlement on a weekly basis.
“In the same vein, all inflows from the proceed of International Money Transfer Operators (IMTOs) should be batched and forwarded to the CBN for settlement on a weekly basis.”
The apex bank advised all authorised dealers to comply with the directive accordingly.
