Naira maintains resilience as rates trade within tight bands

 

In line with trend, the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) continued its weekly interventions, injecting US$210.0 million via the Wholesale Special Interventions Auctions with the aim of maintaining stability across the different segments of the market. Against this backdrop, rates traded flattish within tight bands all week. The CBN spot rate opened the week at N305.70/$1.00 and remained unchanged throughout the week. At the parallel market, the Naira appreciated N1.00 at the start of the week to close at N362.00/$1.00 and traded at similar level all week.
At the Investors’ and Exporters’ (I & E) window, the NAFEX rate opened at prior Friday’s close (N360.16/$1.00) and traded flat till mid-week before appreciating 13 kobo on Thursday to close at N360.03/$1.00. The rate depreciated 5 kobo on Friday and closed the week at N360.08/$1.00, up 8 kobo week-o-week. Activity level in the I & E window weakened as cumulative weekly turnover measured on Thursday stood at $839.3 million, down 40.7 percent ($576.7 million) from $1.4 billion recorded the same period of the prior week.

In the FMDQ OTC futures market, the total value of open contracts of the Naira settled OTC futures strengthened by $198.9 million, indicative of a 2.8 percent week-o-week expansion to $3.6 billion. The most subscribed remains APR-2018 instrument with total market value of $659.9 million (contract price: N360.59) while the JAN-2019 instrument was the least subscribed with a total market value of $47.5 million (contract price: N361.94).