CBN says naira not devalued

The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) said on Thursday that it has not devalued the naira.

The clarification followed a newspaper report that the apex bank has devalued the local currency to N630 per dollar.

“We wish to state categorically that this news report, which in the imagination of the newspaper is exclusive, is replete with outright falsehoods and destabilising innuendos, reflecting potentially willful ignorance of the said medium as to the workings of the Nigerian Foreign Exchange Market,” a statement from CBN said Thursday morning.

According to the statement signed by Isa AbdulMumin, CBN Acting Director, Corporate Communications, “the exchange rate at the Investors’ & Exporters’ (I&E) window traded this morning (June 1, 2023) at N465/US$1 and has been stable around this rate for a while.”

Read also: Customers to present tax clearance certificate to access dollar

CBN said that such report should be disregarded in its entirety, calling it speculative and calculated at causing panic in the market.

However, the Acting Director had told BusinessDay earlier that the CBN would come up with the correct position, noting that there was nothing official at the time of the inquiry.

“Meanwhile, we will come up with the correct position later,” he had said in a phone call.

President Bola Tinubu had noted during his inaugural speech of his plans to ensure a unified exchange rate that will “direct funds away from arbitrage into meaningful investment in the plant, equipment and jobs that power the real economy.”