The Central Bank Governor Mr Godwin Emefiele has discounted rumours of a Naira devaluation. He urged Nigerians not to panic over the government order to migrate to a Transaction Single Account TSA which risks draining billions of dollars from the system.
In an interview with Reuters, Emefiele said the apex bank was ready to inject liquidity if needed into the inter-bank market, which dried up early this week following the directive to government departments to move their funds from commercial banks into a Treasury Single Account (TSA) at the central bank. Banks have been unwilling to lend to each other and this has paralysed the interbank market in the last 2 days leaving rates to revert to 20-30%.In a sign of the financial ructions, commercial bank cash balances with the central bank that are normally earmarked for foreign exchange or bond purchases plunged to N173 billion on Thursday from N486 billion two days ago.
Analysts had predicted that the TSA edict could suck N1.2 trillion ($6 billion) out of the commercial banking system. Emefiele said the amount would be less than N1 trillion, although he did not give details beyond saying the measure was designed to root out graft.
No comments:
Post a Comment