Naira trades low after CBN special intervention at BDC segment

The naira on Wednesday traded low at N395 per dollar at the black market, in spite of the special intervention offer by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) to Bureau De Change (BDC) operators.
Investigation reveals that at Festac and Apapa areas of Lagos where the black market operators transact business, dollar was quoted at N395 yesterday. This represented 1.02 percent lower than the previous day’s N391/$.
The CBN will today sell a total $31.4 million to BDCs after it sold a total of $313.5 million to them on Tuesday. In its bid to sustain supply of liquidity to the foreign exchange market, the CBN decided to make a special intervention in the BDC segment of the market today, April 6.
Disclosing this in Abuja, Isaac Okorafor, acting director of corporate communications at the CBN, said the special intervention of $10,000 for BDCs was meant to meet the upsurge in the forex requests of low-end customers, which had been on the sudden increase in the past few days.
According to Okorafor, the special intervention does not in any way contradict the bank’s newly amended sale policy of selling not more than $10,000 only to BDCs once a week, as the intervention arose due to the increasing demand for forex by Nigerians to address other legitimate needs.
Meanwhile, the CBN spokesman also disclosed that the CBN was collating retail requests from authorised dealers upon which sale would be finalised.
Aminu Gwadabe, acting president, Association of Bureau De Change Operators of Nigeria (ABCON), said the CBN’s intervention was to checkmate the activities of hoarders and speculators.
“Providing liquidity into the BDC segment is the rat poison that will smoke the rat out of the hole in terms of speculation and hoarding. ABCON commend the doggedness of the CBN in all the official window,” Gwadabe said in a text message.