By Adedapo Adesanya
The rationing of foreign exchange (FX) to traders in Nigeria by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) amid a shortage in supply is putting the Naira under pressure.
At the Investors and Exporters (I&E) segment of the market on Monday, the Nigerian currency depreciated by 0.6 per cent or N2.50 against the US Dollar to N421.50/$1 from the previous session’s N419.00/$1.
According to data from the FMDQ Securities Exchange, FX traders could not execute many transactions yesterday as they could not meet the high demand for forex from their customers.
FX trades valued at $70.68 million were carried out during the session compared with the $169.38 million executed last Friday, indicating a shortfall of 58.3 per cent or $98.7 million. Amid these low FX deals, the Naira could not gain strength against its American counterpart due to a shrink in the supply end.
At the spot market, the local currency also depreciated against the Pound Sterling on Monday by N2.17 to trade at N509.50/£1 versus the preceding session’s N507.33/£1 and lost N1.18 against the Euro to close the day at N433.05/€1 compared with N431.87/€1 of the previous day.
But at the Peer-to-Peer (P2P) window, the Nigerian Naira appreciated by N1 against the greenback to trade at N614/$1 in contrast to the preceding session’s value of N615/$1.
At the cryptocurrency market, things continued to worsen for the Luna-backed coin, TerraUSD (UST) as it plunged by 27.8 per cent to trade at $0.1269.
This is coming as Luna Foundation Guard, a fund set up by Terra creator, Mr Do Kwon, said on Monday that the company spent almost all of the Bitcoin in its reserve last week in a futile attempt to save UST.
It was joined yesterday by Cardano (ADA), which depreciated by 0.2 per cent to sell at $0.5742.
However, Litecoin (LTC) gained 3.7 per cent to trade at $70.56, Solana (SOL) improved by 2.6 per cent to $56.77, Binance Coin (BNB) appreciated by 1.3 per cent to $305.71, Ripple (XRP) recorded a 1.2 per cent gain to trade at $0.4356, Dogecoin (DOGE) rose by 0.3 per cent to $0.0899, Bitcoin (BTC) increased by 0.2 per cent to $30,358.88, Ethereum (ETH) went up by 0.1 per cent to $2,075.77, while the US Dollar Tether (USDT) also gained 0.1 per cent to sell for $0.9989.
