Fresh Worries as Naira Sells N505/$1 at Black Market

By Adedapo Adesanya

There were fresh signals of worries for the Naira as it depreciated by N2 against the Dollar at the black market on Friday, July 9.

At the unregulated market segment yesterday, the value of the local currency deteriorated to N505/$1 from N503/$1 it traded at the preceding session.

The Nigerian currency had been stable at the parallel market for the past sessions, but it came under pressure as a result of FX liquidity issues in the country, which affected another window of the market on Friday.

However, at the same black market, the domestic currency maintained stability against the Pound Sterling and the Euro on Friday, closing at N708/£1 and N593/€1 respectively.

At the Investors and Exchange (I&E) window, the Naira was also under pressure yesterday as it depreciated against the greenback by 0..12 per cent or 50 kobo.

Business Post reports that at the regulated FX category, the Naira was traded at N411.75/$1 compared with N411.25/$1 of the preceding session.

The loss came despite a decline in the demand for FX by customers as transactions worth $73.99 million were made in contrast to the $84.06 million achieved on Thursday, signifying a reduction by 11.9 per cent or $10.06 million.

But at the interbank segment of the market, the exchange rate of the Nigerian Naira to the US Dollar remained unchanged on Friday at N410.11/$1.

As regards the digital currency market, it was mixed, though the cryptocurrencies are beginning to recover from the ‘attacks’ of the bears.

Four of the seven virtual coins tracked by Business Post on the trading platform, Quidax, closed in the green zone, with the Dash (DASH) rising by 10.2 per cent to sell at N64,001.00.

Ripple (XRP) gained 6.7 per cent to trade at N328.98, Litecoin (LTC) moved up by 5.3 per cent to trade at N68,879.00, while Bitcoin (BTC) rose by 2.5 per cent to close at N17,021,139.52.

However, Ethereum (ETH) went down by 5.2 per cent to close at N1,070,010.00, Tron (TRX) depreciated by 0.6 per cent to sell at N31.33, while the US Dollar Tether (USDT) declined by 0.1 per cent to quote at N510.00.