Nigeria interbank lending flat at 8.25 pct on liquidity

Nigeria's interbank lending rate was flat at 8.25 percent on Friday, unchanged from a week ago, after the effect of a liquidity boost from maturing Treasury bills outweighed central bank cash withdrawals, dealers said.
The central bank withdrew about 39 billion naira ($196 million) from the banking system to meet a weekly cash reserve requirement and also sold 181.89 billion naira worth of open market (OMO) bills on Thursday to mop up liquidity.
However, the bank injected 161.9 billion naira to pay off matured open market (OMO) bills, into an interbank market which had a credit balance of over 200 billion naira, dealers said.
"The market is very liquid in spite of Thursday's cash outflows," one dealer told Reuters.
Though liquidity is expected to drop next week as state-owned oil firm NNPC, which sells its dollar oil proceeds to the banking system in exchange for naira, withdraws its deposit to the central bank, he added.
The secured open buy back was unchanged at 8 percent, compared with the benchmark rate of 13 percent, while the overnight placement was also flat 8.5 percent.