Dollar Scarcity Weakens Naira to N779/$1 at P2P, N772/$1 at Parallel Market

By Adedapo Adesanya

The steep fall of the Naira to the United States Dollar continued on Thursday as its value further weakened in the Peer-2-Peer (P2P) and the parallel market segments of the foreign exchange (FX) market.

Also, the Nigerian Naira depreciated against the Dollar in the official market, which is the Investors and Exporters (I&E) window of the forex market yesterday.

In the P2P, the local currency lost N4 against the American currency to trade at N779/$1, in contrast to the previous day’s value of N775/$1.

It was a similar scenario in the black market, where the Naira depreciated against the greenback yesterday by N10 amid Dollar scarcity to quote at N772/$1 versus Wednesday’s exchange rate of N762/$1.

In the same vein, at the I&E segment of the market, the domestic currency fell by 0.07 per cent or 34 Kobo to close at N463.67/$1 compared with the midweek’s session value of N463.33/$1.

This happened as the value of FX trades completed during the session jumped by 51.1 per cent or $89.56 million to $157.56 million from the $77.00 million achieved a day earlier.

In the interbank segment, the Naira also shrank against the Pound Sterling by 32 Kobo to sell at N571.93/£1 compared to the previously traded rate of N571.61/£1 while it also dropped by 32 Kobo against the Euro to close at N497.57/€1 versus N497.25/€1.

Meanwhile, the digital currency market witnessed a recovery on Thursday as US debt ceiling talks showed promising results after officials signalled progress.

In the event that the government of the world’s largest economy defaults on its debts, risk assets like stocks and cryptos would face short-term losses, analysts noted.

Bitcoin (BTC) gained 0.7 per cent to close at $26,429.69, Ethereum (ETH) appreciated by 1.6 per cent to $1,807.61, Litecoin (LTC) went up by 2.7 per cent to $86.64, Ripple (XRP) recorded a 2.6 per cent growth to $0.465, and Dogecoin (DOGE) improved by 0.6 per cent to $0.0707.

Conversely, Cardano (ADA) slid by 0.9 per cent to $0.3571, Solana (SOL) went down by 0.6 per cent to $19.28, and Binance Coin (BNB) fell 0.4 per cent to $303.26, while the US Dollar Tether (USDT) and Binance USD (BUSD) remained unchanged at $1.00 each.