The scarcity of Naira at the interbank market has increased the overnight tenor of the Nigerian Interbank Offered Rate to 120 per cent.
The lending rate hit 148 per cent earlier this week as news of a Federal High Court ex parte order instructing all banks to forfeit all monies held in accounts without bank verification numbers, filtered into the market.
Some analysts attributed the development to the Central Bank of Nigeria’s open market operations as well as its sustained Wholesale Secondary Market Intervention Sales auction, that requires firms to deposit naira cash before they can purchase dollars.
