The Open Market Operation (OMO) market recorded no sales to the N70 billion bill offered to investors by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) on Thursday due to demand for higher rates.
The short-, medium-and long-term instruments were oversubscribed by Investors but the CBN could not meet their demand, leading to no sales.
A breakdown of the OMO auction shows that the CBN offered N50 billion for the longer-term bills which were oversubscribed to the tune of N306.67 billion at a bid range of between 12.34 and 12.60 percent.
The 89-day and 194-day tenors were allocated N10 billion each. While the shorter instrument (89-day) was oversubscribed to the tune of N20.50 billion, the medium-term bill (194-day) was oversubscribed by N17.00 billion. Investors demanded a stop rate of between 11.23 and 11.49 percent.
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The average OMO yield across the curve declined by 46 bps to 8.45 percent on Friday. NT-bills market closed on a positive note on Friday, with average yield across the curve declining by 1 basis point to close at 2.28 percent.
The NT-bills market closed on a positive note on Friday with average yield across the curve declining by 1 basis point to close at 2.28 percent, a report by FSDH research stated.
The Overnight rate declined by 0.98 percent to close at 3.42 percent on Friday. The Open Buy Back (OBB) rate also declined by 0.85 percent to close at 2.75 percent.
At the foreign exchange market, Naira gained N0.58k as the dollar was sold at N386.00k on Friday from N386.58k traded on Thursday at the Investors and Exporters (I&E) forex window, data from FMDQ revealed.
Earlier in the morning, the market on Friday reversed its previous gain as it opened with an indicative rate of N387.10k per dollar at the I&E window.
Naira weakened by N2.00k after the dollar was sold at N456 on Friday as against N454 traded on the previous day.
At the parallel market popularly called the black market, the cost of dollar was N455 the same rate it closed with on Thursday.
The official rate at the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) also remained stable at N361.00k per dollar. Scarcity of the greenback has persisted in the market following the sharp drop in the price of oil. The price of Brent crude stood at $32.07 per barrel as on Friday morning.
The I&E FX window witnessed an improvement in traded volumes with 64 percent increase to about $45 million on Thursday. Bids remained in the high rate with a single trade breaching the recent high to trade at N401.95 per dollar.
