By Adedapo Adesanya
The Nigerian Naira is beginning to come under heavy pressure at the Investors and Exporters (I&E) segment of the foreign exchange (forex) market
At the trading session of Thursday, December 19, 2019, the local currency further declined against the greenback despite a significant drop in the demand for Dollar.
Data obtained by Business Post from FMDQ, the platform that tracks forex transactions at the window, showed that there was a significant reduction in the market turnover yesterday.
Transactions worth $98.43 million were recorded during the session compared with $600.45 million exchanged at the previous session, indicating a decline of 83.6 percent or $502.02 million.
At the end of the day, the Naira further depreciated to N363.96/$1 from N363.70/$1 it was exchanged at the investors segment of the market the previous day. From the analysis of the day’s session, the local currency at various times traded as high as N364.80/$1 and as low as N357.00/$1.
A look at the performance of the domestic currency at the official window of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) also known as the interbank segment indicated that things remained as they were on Wednesday.
At the close of transactions on Thursday, the Nigerian currency remained unchanged against the United States currency at N306.95/$1. It was a similar situation at the parallel market as the Naira finished at N363 to a Dollar, the same rate it settled on Wednesday. It also traded flat the British Pound Sterling at the black market at N480/£1.
However, the local currency suffered a N1 loss against the Euro at the same segment of the forex market, closing at N401/€1 on Thursday against N400/€1 it traded at the midweek session.
With the festive around, the Naira is expected to continue to depreciate because of demand for the foreign currencies by those who need to travel abroad for vacation. But the CBN has always assured that it was capable to make the market very liquid so as to curb activities of speculators, who could cause harm to the Naira because of the situation.
Dipo Olowookere