By Adedapo Adesanya
The Naira depreciated against the US Dollar in the Peer-2-Peer (P2P), parallel market, and the Investors and Exporters (I&E) segments of the foreign exchange market on Monday, May 15, as FX liquidity squeeze and rising inflation bite harder on the citizens.
In the P2P section, traders exchanged their local currency for the American currency at N758/$1 versus N756/$1 it sold in the previous session.
Equally, at the I&E segment of the market, the local went south by N1.67 or 0.36 per cent to trade at N464.00/$1 compared with the preceding session’s value of N462.33/$1 despite the value of forex transactions going down by 65.9 per cent or $106.81 million.
Business Post reports that the turnover for the trading day stood at $55.10 million compared with the $161.91 million achieved last Friday.
In the black market, the domestic currency tumbled against the Dollar yesterday by N2 to sell at N743/$1, in contrast to the previous trading day’s rate of N741/$1.
Data released by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) on Monday showed that Nigeria’s annual inflation rate rose to 22.22 per cent in April from 22.04 per cent in the previous month.
The statistics office said the April 2023 inflation rate increased by 0.18 per cent compared to the March 2023 headline inflation rate.
However, in the interbank segment of the market, the Naira witnessed further positive movement against the Pound Sterling as well as against the Euro, as it gained N3.50 against the former to close at N577.12/£1 versus its previous rate of N580.62/£1 and appreciated against the latter by N1.60 to N502.54/€1 from N504.64/€1.
In the cryptocurrency market, Bitcoin (BTC) declined by o.3 per cent to sell at $27,121.81, Ethereum (ETH) lost 0.7 per cent to sell at $1,812.75, Cardano (ADA) fell by 1.8 per cent to $0.3651, Solana (SOL) depreciated by 1.6 per cent to $20.86, and Dogecoin (DOGE) shrank by 1.4 per cent to $0.0717.
Further, Ripple (XRP) recorded a 0.8 per cent drop to trade at $0.4246, Binance Coin (BNB) lost 0.4 per cent to quote at $312.69, while Litecoin (LTC) went up by 2.4 per cent to $87.41, with US Dollar Tether (USDT) and Binance USD (BUSD) remaining unchanged at $1.00 each.
Dipo Olowookere