By Adedapo Adesanya
The value of the Naira improved against the US Dollar at the Nigerian Autonomous Foreign Exchange Market (NAFEX) on Tuesday and maintained stability in the parallel market.
In the official market, the domestic currency appreciated against the greenback yesterday by 0.67 per cent or N9.96 to close at the rate of N1,473.66/$1, in contrast to the preceding day’s N1,483.62/$1 following fresh injections from a crude oil loan swap facility.
The value of forex transacted during the trading session significantly increased by 138.7 per cent or $224.22 million to $385.91 million from the $161.69 million achieved a day earlier, according to data from the FMDQ Securities Exchange.
The FX supply boost was influenced by the $925 million provided by the African Export-Import Bank (Afreximbank) to Nigeria under a $3.3 billion syndicated credit facility sponsored by the Nigerian National Petroleum Company (NNPC) Limited, bringing total disbursements to $3.175 billion.
The financing campaign, called Project Gazelle, is Nigeria’s biggest crude oil prepayment facility and one of the largest syndicated loans raised in Africa last year, according to Afreximbank.
However, the local currency depreciated against the Pound Sterling during the session by N41.17 to wrap the session at N1,883.62/£1 versus Monday’s closing price of N1,842.45/£1 and against the Euro, the Nigerian currency shed N24.36 to sell for N1,592.03/€1 versus N1,567.67/€1.
In the black market segment of the FX market, the Naira traded flat against the Dollar yesterday at N1,480/$1.
The cryptocurrency market recorded a largely negative outcome with Solana (SOL) slumping by 1.9 per cent to trade at $151.12, and Cardano (ADA) declining by 1.5 per cent to close at $0.4252.
Further, Ethereum (ETH) lost 1.1 per cent to trade at $3,517.33, Binance Coin (BNB) went down by 1.1 per cent to $610.93, Dogecoin (DOGE) depreciated 1.0 per cent to sell at $0.1396, Ripple (XRP) dropped 0.8 per cent to finish at $0.4815, Bitcoin (BTC) recorded a 0.5 per cent loss to settle at $67,337.78, and Litecoin (LTC) shrank by 0.4 per cent to $77.28, while the US Dollar Tether (USDT) and the US Dollar Coin (USDC) remained unchanged at $1.00 apiece.