The Central Bank of Nigeria is soon planning to resume its foreign exchange sales to the Bureaux de Change operators, media reports said. With that, the apex bank injected $51.8 million into the foreign exchange market.
The amount was injected through the BDC operators. Since the middle of March, naira was being devalued on the back of the protracted coronavirus pandemic. In an attempt to ease the currency devaluation, the Central Bank of Nigeria adopted a single exchange rate over a multi exchange rate policy to stabilise the value of naira.
The apex bank seeks to boost the value of naira and subsequently strengthen the Nigerian economy. A few weeks ago, the World Bank reported that Nigeria’s economy necessitates stronger forex action.
Hit by a severe shortage of dollars, the country had stalled its weekly interbank foreign exchange sales in March. The coronavirus pandemic and stringent lockdown measures across world economies have resulted in weaker oil prices, further hurting the economy.
World Bank country director, Shubham Chaudhuri, told the media, “The Azura case is just one example of the difficulties that a number of established foreign and domestic private firms in Nigeria have had in accessing the forex to meet their business and contractual obligations.”