The business world, particularly in Nigeria last week experienced a new breath of life as the snag in the Suez Canal relaxed and lockdown in parts of Europe and Africa eased. This was evidenced in a measured volatility experienced in the oil sector where the price Brent declined marginally by 0.1 per cent.
In Nigeria, there was calm across the various windows of the foreign exchange (forex) market, with the naira unmoved at both the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) spot rate and the parallel market. It remained unchanged T N379/$ and N485/$ at the spot and parallel markets respectively. That naira actually appreciated by 70 kobo at the Investors ‘and Exporters’ (I&E) window .
Activity level in I&E Window dipped 40.2 per cent to $186.6 million from $312.0 million in the previous week.
The country’s foreign reserve was favored as it inched up 0.5 per cent to$34.5 billion last week.
At the FMDQ Securities Exchange (SE) FX Futures Contract Market, the total value of open contracts fell 20.6 per cent ($1.3 billion) to $5.1 billion. The MAR 2022 instrument (contract price: N435.58) sustained its strong buying interest with an additional subscription of $193.9m, which took total value to $204.5 million. Also, the APRIL 2022 instrument (contract price: ₦437.88) saw a significant gain, as total value increased $78.0 million to $80.5 million. In the coming week, we anticipate rates to remain in the same band across the segments of the forex market.
