Forex: CBN Lifts Retail SMIS With $321.4m

The Retail Secondary Market Intervention Sales (SMIS) of the foreign exchange market has received a boost of $321.4 million from the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN).

This was according to CBN’s Acting Director, Corporate Communications, Mr. Isaac Okorafor, who made the disclosure in a statement on Friday.

Okarafor revealed that the latest figures released by the apex bank was to cater to Forex requests from agricultural, airlines, petroleum products and raw materials and machinery sectors of the economy.

The CBN Director said the continued intervention were in line with the assurances made by the Governor, Godwin Emefiele, to sustain market liquidity in order to boost production and trade and maintain stability in the forex market.

Speaking further, Okorafor assured that the CBN remained very committed to ensuring that all the sectors continue to enjoy access to the foreign exchange required for the business concerns.

Okarafor said the CBN will continue to ensure the availability of Forex to low-end users, noting that naira as of Friday, February 23, 2018, exchanged against the dollar at N361/$1.

It will be recalled that the CBN in its last SMIS, earlier in February 2018, injected the sum of $325.64 million in the inter-bank Foreign Exchange Market.