Naira Plunges Further to N545/$1 at Black Market

By Adedapo Adesanya

The headwinds continued to knock down the Naira at the black market segment of the foreign exchange (FX) market with the local currency crashing against the US Dollar by N5 to N545/$1 from the previous day’s rate of N540/$1.

The forex market in the country is under pressure as the high demand for foreign currencies a shortage of supply is having a toll on the domestic currency and the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) seems to be confused on what to do.

The issues started after it announced the suspension of FX sales to Bureaux De Change (BDC) operators in July and placed an embargo on the registration of new ones.

Since then, the Naira has not known any peace and its woes continued yesterday even against the Pound Sterling at the parallel market as it lost N3 to close at N743/£1 compared to the preceding session’s rate of N740/£1.

Equally, the Nigerian Naira depreciated against the Euro at the regulated market yesterday by N4 to sell at N636/€1 compared to N632/€1 of the previous day.

At the Investors and Exporters (I&E) FX window, the Naira depreciated against the greenback by 23 kobo or 0.08 per cent to trade at N412/$1 in contrast to N411.67/$1 it traded at the preceding session.

Data on the FMDQ Securities Exchange indicated that the turnover at the session went down by 22.9 per cent or $26.29 million to $88.39 million from $114.68 million.

In the same vein, there was a slight difference in the exchange rate of the Naira to the Dollar at the interbank segment of the market on Friday as the former lost one kobo to close at N410.48/$1 versus N410.47/$1 it was sold on Thursday.

Meanwhile, nine of 10 digital coins tracked by Business Post closed bearish with Dash (DASH) recording the biggest fall of 6.4 per cent to trade at N104,892.19, while Bitcoin (BTC) followed with a 5.9 per cent loss to close at N23,800,911.99.

Ripple (XRP) went down by 4.3 per cent to N581.12, Tron (TRX) lost 3.4 per cent to sell at N50.15, Litecoin (LTC) moved down by 2.8 per cent to trade at N98,010.66, Dogecoin (DOGE) dropped 0.9 per cent to N152.76, Binance Coin (BNB) fell by 0.8 per cent to N151,070, Cardano (ADA) depleted by 0.2 per cent to N1,321.30, while Ethereum (ETH) dropped 0.1 per cent to close at N1,917,930.00.

The only gainer was the US Dollar Tether (USDT) as it appreciated by 0.9 per cent to sell for N544.06.