Nigeria’s currency on Tuesday remained stable across segments of the foreign exchange market as dollar supply improves amid modest demand.
Dollar still traded at N461 and N460 on the black market and Bureau De Change (BDC) segment of the FX market.
Over 5,000 BDCs received dollar allocation worth over $50 million from the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) on Tuesday.
The Apex bank sells $10,000 to BDCs twice a week and has sold over $500 million to over 5,000 operators across the country.
At the Investors and Exporters (I&E) forex window, Naira remained stable at N386.00 per dollar for the third consecutive day. Analysts at FSDH research said most participants maintained bids between N382.00 and N393.11 per dollar.
The market opened with an indicative rate of N384.92k on Tuesday, signaling a significant appreciation of N1.37k when compared with N386.29k opened with on Monday, data from FMDQ revealed.
At the money market, the CBN will on Wednesday conduct a Primary Market Auction (PMA) to roll over NT-bills maturities worth N134.37 billion (N20.0 billion lower than the expected maturity of N154.37 billion) across 91-day (N29.84 billion), 182-day (N10.62 billion), and 364-day (N93.91 billion) tenors, a report by FSDH stated.
The Nigerian treasury bills secondary market closed on a negative note on Tuesday with average yield across the curve increasing by 1 basis point to close at 0.53 percent from 0.52 percent on the previous day. The average yield across long-term maturities widened by 2 bps, due to maximum selling pressure witnessed in the NTB 16-Sep-21 (+8 bps) and NTB 26-Aug-21 (+8 bps) maturity bills. However, average yields across short-term and medium-term maturities remained unchanged at 0.38 percent and 0.32 percent, respectively.
The Overnight (O/N) rate declined by 4.50 percent to close at 1.75 percent from 6.25 percent on the previous day, and the Open Buy Back (OBB) rate also declined by 5.00 percent to close at 1.00 percent as against the last close of 6.00 percent. The money market rates are likely to remain subdued as inflows from Open Market Operation (OMO) bills maturities worth N336.09 billion and FGN bond coupon payments of N160.32 billion are expected to flow into the system, barring any significant liquidity mop-up activity by the CBN.
