Wednesday, 14 October 2015

Banks’ cash balances hit highest figure in 2015


 
Central Bank of Nigeria, CBN, may be visiting the banking system with liquidity mop up instruments this week as the heavy surge in excess liquidity has crashed both interbank rate and yield on treasury bills, while piling demand pressure on the foreign exchange market.

Additional liquidity was pumped into the banking system last week, bringing market liquidity to N1.06 trillion, its highest level for the year thus crashing money market rates to 0.7 percent and 1.1 percent for Open Buy Back, OBB, and overnight transactions, respectively, the lowest rates this year.

Amidst this cash deluge, additional N137.1 billion is expected to hit the market tomorrow in form of maturing instruments, bringing banking systems’ liquidity net flow to N1.2 trillion.

Commenting on the market situation, financial analysts at Afrinvest Group said: “In the current week, we expect the apex bank to carry out a substantial mop up exercise given the high level of liquidity in the system.”

Apart from debt instrument auctions, CBN’s foreign exchange window is expected to suck in over N400 billion from the banks’ cash dump this week.

Also, the Debt Management Office, DMO, is set to auction a total of N80.0 billion in February 2020 and March 2024 instruments.

Afrinvest Group analysts said: “We expect this auction to remain largely successful at the prevailing market yields, given the increased appetite of local fund ma-nagers for bonds amidst capital market volatility.”

Due to the high liquidity in the system last week, performance of the treasury bills market was very bullish as a lot of buying interest was noticed across all tenor all through the week.
Source: Business Vanguard - By Emeka Anaeto, Economy Editor
 

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