CBN Increases Forex Allocations to Banks for SMEs, Tuition Fees, Travellers
The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) has announced an increase in the amount of foreign exchange allocated to banks to meet the requests of its customers. This follows the inflow of requests by travellers seeking foreign exchange for travel allowances, payment of tuition and medical bills.
FGN Bonds
The FGN bond market traded on a very sluggish note today with improved bids on some selected FGN Bonds especially at the long end of the curve with very few offers to match. The market saw order-driven demand for short-duration bonds, 2023s to 2026s papers, although very few trades were executed due to wide bid/offer spreads.
The T-Bills Market opened the day on an active note as investors sought the secondary market to fill their lost bids at yesterday’s NTB auction. The new 1yr NTB paper opened the day quoted at 9.50/9.20 at the early hours but most of the market trades were executed around 9.30%. There was a demand for the Special treasury bills 30th Aug 2021 maturity albeit offers were scarce during today’s session.
Equities
The NGX All-Share Index (NGX-ASI) was up by 1.23% last week, moderating the year-to-date loss to 3.84%. MRS +9.57%, FCMB Group +8.20%, and PZ Cussons +3.77% closed positive last week, while International Breweries -6.14%, Lafarge Africa -4.43%, and Stanbic IBTC -1.96% closed negative…
Crude Oil Market
Last week, oil prices rallied to levels above US$70/bbl, higher than pre-pandemic levels, the price of Brent crude rose by 3.25%, closing at US$71.89/bbl, the highest level since May 2019, with a 38.78% increase year-to-date. The average price year-to-date is US$63.81/bbl, 47.65% higher than the average of US$43.22/bbl in 2020. During the OPEC+ (Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, plus Russia) meeting on Tuesday…
FX Market
The currency remains fairly stable at the parallel market even though Naira fell against the U. S dollar at the official market Thursday. This happened as forex turnover decreased by 60.40% with $89.89 million posted as against $226.98 million recorded in the previous session on Wednesday.
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