The Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, Godwin Emefiele advised investors in the U.K that he expects the true value of the naira to be between N430-440 to the dollar.
Mr. Emefiele made this comment in a Webinar organized by the Standard Bank of Africa (parent company of Stanbic IBTC Nigeria). According to sources who attended the event on Monday, Mr Emefiele told participants that the current exchange rate at the parallel market was between N430-440/$1 and not the black-market rate which closed at about N500/$1.
In an apparent attempt to woo foreign investments, the CBN Governor also encouraged foreign investors to reconsider their waning interest in Nigerian Equities suggesting that some of the stocks were undervalued. Nigeria’s capital importation data into equities was just $755 million in the whole of 2020 compared to $1.8 billion in 2019.
The absence of foreign portfolio investments in equities and bonds has added to the ongoing liquidity challenges being faced in the FX market which partly explains why the CBN Governor is attempting to attract more foreign investors.
Exchange Rate Disparity
The exchange rate between the USD and Naira currency pair has oscillated between N485–N500 in the last 3 days driven by speculators trying to preempt CBN intervention.
The rumour towards the end of last week was that the CBN was about to inject millions of dollars into the system which they opined could force prices down. This rumour was driven by a scathing World Bank report which blamed the Central Bank of Nigeria’s sub-optimal management of the foreign exchange regime as the reason for the increasing disparity between the official and parallel market rates currently being experienced in the country.
