By Dipo Olowookere
The exchange rate of the Nigerian Naira to the United States Dollar depreciated in both the black market and the peer-to-peer segments of the currency market on Tuesday.
The official and authorised foreign exchange (FX) windows were closed on Monday and Tuesday due to the public holiday declared by the federal government to mark Eid-el Kabir but the unauthorised markets were open for business.
The inability of forex users to obtain foreign currencies at the spot market put demand pressure on the parallel market and this consequently weakened the local currency yesterday.
Business Post gathered from FX traders on the streets of Lagos yesterday that the Naira was exchanged with the greenback at N617/$1 compared with the preceding session’s rate of N616/$1, indicating a decline by N1 or 0.16 per cent.
One of the traders, who spoke with this newspaper in a chat, explained that the reason for the higher rate was because of Dollar scarcity.
“It is very difficult for us to get Dollars from the banks and for some of us, we have to manage what we have. If you come to buy more than $5,000, we sell higher like N620 because replacing that amount of Dollars will be very difficult,” the currency trader in the Olugbede Model Market area of Egbeda, Lagos, who identified himself as Alhaji Isa, said.
In the P2P segment of the market, the domestic currency also performed poorly against its American counterpart on Tuesday as it lost N2 or 0.32 per cent to trade at N623/$1 in contrast to the previous session’s value of N621/$1.
Trading activities are expected to resume on the Investors and Exporters (I&E) and the interbank windows of the market today after the two-day break.
At the last trading session, which was last Friday, the Naira was exchanged for the Dollar at the investors’ segment at N427.75/$1.