The Nigerian Naira plunged against the United States dollar on Monday to its lowest in a week.

The local currency which closed at N380 to a U.S. dollar on the parallel market on Friday, slid to N390 on Monday.

However, the Naira which has been hovering between N380 and N410 to a dollar in the past two weeks has failed to substantially close the gap between the official and black market rates.

Prompting the Central Bank of Nigeria to sell about $3 billion since the intervention began in February.

Accordingly, the CBN on Monday offered a fresh $246.2 million to authorised dealers at the forex auction in the interbank wholesale window –‘the Small and Medium Enterprises and invisibles’ segments.

The breakdown shows the sum of $150 million was auctioned at the wholesale window while the SMEs and invisibles were appropriated $52 million and $44.2 million respectively.

This was confirmed by the CBN spokesman, Mr. Isaac Okorafor, who stated that the forward sales would be concluded in the days to come.

He further stated that the CBN would continue its weekly sales to dealers in the Bureau de Change segment in order to guarantee onward sale to end users.

“The SME operators no longer have to patronise or source foreign through unofficial windows and no more pressure on either the BDCs or any other unofficial source with the opening of the special window,” he added.

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