By Adedapo Adesanya
The Naira appreciated on the US Dollar at the Investors and Exporters (I&E) segment of the market on Tuesday, July 25, amid continued foreign exchange supply shortage in the financial system.
In the spot market, the local currency gained 0.08 per cent or 62 Kobo against the greenback to settle at N791.42/$1, in contrast to the preceding day’s rate of N792.04/$1.
Business Post reports that the currency market is still being plagued with the FX crisis as the value of transactions remained low, though it marginally increased by 4.2 per cent or $2.09 million during the session to $51.55 million from the $49.46 million recorded on Monday.
Meanwhile, in the Peer-2-Peer (P2P) segment of the forex market, the Naira depreciated against the Dollar yesterday by N3 to sell at N864/$1 compared with the previous day’s value of N861/$1.
Similarly, in the black market, the domestic currency lost N2 against the United States currency on Tuesday to quote at N867/$1 versus the previous trading day’s N865/$1.
Yesterday, the acting governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), Mr Folashodun Shonubi, while announcing an increase in the benchmark interest rate by 25 basis points from 18.50 per cent to 18.75 per cent, confirmed that the market was faced with liquidity issues which was restricting it from meeting its unification plans, adding that it was working on creating an efficient market as a priority.
“We are not trying to unify any rate. We believe that we need to encourage the market to be more efficient and more effective, and that takes a bit of time,” he said, adding that, “the reality that there is pent-up demand which current supply may not be sufficient for.”
In the official market, the Naira weakened against the Pound Sterling by N23.96 to close at N1,014.48/£1 versus Monday’s N990.52/£1 and against the Euro, it shed N14.53 to sell at N871.45/€1 compared with last session’s value of N856.92/€1.
As for the digital currency market, Dogecoin (DOGE) rose for a third consecutive day on Tuesday as markets continued to speculate what role the meme coin could play on the newly rebranded X platform.
Traders continued to react to Twitter’s rebrand to X and the coin, which is favoured by the owner of the platform, Mr Elon Musk; this spurred a 5.5 per cent appreciation to trade at $0.0801.
Bitcoin (BTC) rose by 0.2 per cent to sell at $29,151.28, Ethereum (ETH) went up by 0.3 per cent to $1,854.93, Ripple (XRP) rose by 1.2 per cent to $0.7052, Litecoin (LTC) expanded by 0.1 per cent to $89.35, and Solana (SOL) improved by 0.02 per cent to $23.37.
On the flip side, Cardano (ADA) slid by 0.9 per cent to $0.3018, and Binance Coin (BNB) decreased by 0.7 per cent to $237.22, while the US Dollar Tether (USDT) and Binance USD (BUSD) closed flat at $1.00 each.
Dipo Olowookere