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The Managing Director of the FMDQ OTC Securities Exchange, Bola Oladele Koko, has said that foreign portfolio investors buying local currency bonds made a single $270 million transaction at N345 per dollar on Monday, according to Reuters.

Koko said the transaction brought the total volume of trade in the Nigerian foreign exchange market to $327 million. Apart from the single $270 million transaction, other transactions were carried out at the rate of N314.5 to N317.34 per dollar.

The surge in trading on Monday came after the Central Bank of Nigeria announced that it would offer N212.85 billion worth of treasury bills maturing between 91 days and 12 months on Wednesday.

Since the CBN floated the naira on the interbank FX market on June 20th, the apex bank has been the main provider of liquidity to the market. However, Monday’s trading is the first time that significant liquidity would come from sources other than the CBN.

The average daily trading on the FX reaches $50 million on “normal days”, but rises to $100 million if the CBN intervenes, traders told Reuters. The naira closed at N305.5 per dollar on the official market on Monday, but reached N405 per dollar at the parallel market.