By Adedapo Adesanya
It was not a good day for the Naira in the Nigerian Autonomous Foreign Exchange Market (NAFEX) as its value weakened against the US Dollar for a third straight session on Thursday by 1.08 per cent or N17.09 to quote at N1,603.80/$1 compared with the previous day’s rate of N1,586.71/$1.
This was aggravated by foreign exchange (FX) liquidity squeeze despite efforts by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) to intervene in the market.
The central bank has continued to assure the market that it would intensify the sale of forex to authorised traders to ease strains on the domestic currency.
Yesterday, the FX turnover in the spot market went down by 23.4 per cent or $39.94 million to $131.09 million from the preceding session’s $171.03 million.
The Nigerian Naira also witnessed heavy decline against the Pound Sterling in the official market during the session by N70.65 to settle at N2,062.42/£1 compared with the previous day’s N1,991.77/£1 and lost N63.16 against the Euro to trade at N1,736.68/€1 versus N1,673.02/€1.
In the parallel market, the Naira depreciated against the Dollar on Thursday by N5 to sell for N1,590/$1 compared with the N1,595/$1 it closed a day earlier.
Meanwhile, in the cryptocurrency market, there were gains from the majority of benchmarked tokens as data showed that the US GDP Growth Rate for the second quarter increased by 2.8 per cent quarter-on-quarter, surpassing the previous quarter’s growth of 1.4 per cent and the consensus forecast of 2 per cent.
This stronger-than-expected economic growth signals a robust recovery, potentially influencing investor sentiment positively toward assets like crypto.
Bitcoin (BTC) gained 4.5 per cent to finish at $67,008.00, Dogecoin (DOGE) appreciated by 4.4 per cent to $0.1293, Solana (SOL) improved by 4.1 per cent to finish at $177.33, Cardano (ADA) rose by 4.3 per cent to $0.4117, Litecoin (LTC) jumped by 3.4 per cent to $71.09, Binance Coin (BNB) went up by 3.3 per cent to $579.92, Ethereum (ETH) grew by 2.9 per cent to $3,265.98, and Ripple (XRP) increased by 0.7 per cent to $0.6075, while the US Dollar Tether (USDT) and US Dollar Coin (USDC) remained unchanged at $1.0 apiece.
