Apprehension as Naira Crashes to N993/$1 at Official Market

By Adedapo Adesanya

The Naira recorded its worst performance this year at the official market, the Nigerian Autonomous Foreign Exchange Market (NAFEM), as it depreciated by 25.8 per cent or N203.88 against the US Dollar on Monday, October 30.

Business Post reports that the exchange rate of the Naira to the Dollar finished yesterday at N993.82/$1 compared with the preceding session’s value of N789.94/$1.

The value of the domestic currency tanked during the trading day as the supply of foreign exchange (FX) shrank, with the value of transactions going down by 66.0 per cent or $171.53 million to $88.31 million from the $259.84 million reported last Friday.

Similarly, things also worsened in the Peer-to-Peer (P2P) segment of the forex market on Monday as it weakened by N61 to sell at N1,175/$1 compared with the preceding session’s N1,114/$1.

In the same vein, the local currency performed badly against the greenback in the black market window, shedding N30 to trade at N1,180/$1, in contrast to the previous trading session’s rate of N1,150/$1.

The worrying performance of the Naira comes as the year sways into the last two months of the year, with importers rushing to stock up goods for the festive season with limited FX supply as promises by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) to inject more cash into the market to stabilise the exchange rate has not been fully established.

In the spot market, the Nigerian currency depreciated against the British Pound Sterling by N134.97 to close at N1,104.56/£1 versus last Friday’s N969.59/£1 and against the Euro, it lost N121.53 to sell at N965.25/€1 versus N843.72/€1.

Meanwhile, the digital currency market was bullish, with Solana (SOL) growing by 10.6 per cent to trade at $35.99, Ripple (XRP) recorded a 3.9 per cent appreciation to quote at $0.5724, and Cardano (ADA) expanded by 1.9 per cent to finish at $0.2995.

Further, Litecoin (LTC) increased by 1.1 per cent to $68.96, Binance Coin (BNB) recorded a 0.5 per cent jump to sell at $226.87, Ethereum (ETH) improved by 0.5 per cent to $1,795.50, Dogecoin (DOGE) went up by 0.4 per cent to $0.0691.

However, Bitcoin (BTC) depreciated by 0.2 per cent to sell at $34,245.15, while the US Dollar Tether (USDT) and Binance USD (BUSD) remained unchanged at $1.00 each