Tony Chukwunyem 
As uncertainty lingers over the eventual impact of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN)’s discontinuation of foreign exchange sales to Bureaux De Change (BDC) on naira, the Chief Executive Officer (CEO), Financial Derivatives Company Ltd (FDC), Mr. Bismarck Rewane, has said he expects the forex market to witness stability in Q3’21 due to improved dollar cash flow.
He stated this in his August 2021 Lagos Business School (LBS) Executive Breakfast Session presentation, which was obtained by New Telegraph at the weekend.
Naira had dropped to a record low of N525 per dollar at the parallel market on July 28, twenty-four hours after CBN announced that it would no longer sell forex to BDC operators.
However, according to Rewane, naira is likely to stabilise in the coming weeks as CBN would be able to access more dollars to defend the local currency.
He cited the recent accretion to the nation’s external reserves, the $3.35 billion in funding that Nigeria will get from International Monetary Fund (IMF) Special Drawing Rights (SDR) allocation in the next few weeks as well as the country’s impending $3 billion Eurobond sale.
He said: “External reserves recorded an accretion of $80 million (0.24 per cent) to $33.4 billion in July, IMF’s SDR of $3.35 billion and Eurobond issue of $3 billion(will) boost dollar cash flow and support external reserves accretion.”
Specifically, he said naira was expected to “gravitate towards fair value- N470/$ to N490/$.”
