I&E FX Turnover Jumps 13% to $980.13m W-o-W

By Sodeinde Temidayo David

The total transactions made at the Investors and Exporters (I&E) window of the foreign exchange (forex) market stood at $980.13 million.

The value achieved last week marked a rise of 13 per cent or $112.93 million compared to the turnover of $867.20 million recorded in the preceding week, according to data tracked by Business Post from the FMDQ Securities Exchange, which keeps records of transactions at the Nigerian Autonomous Foreign Exchange Rate Fixing (NAFEX), a platform for forex activities in the I&E window.

As observed by this newspaper, an average I&E FX turnover of $196.03 million was recorded last week at the investors’ segment.

At the opening trading session of the week, the value of trades at the special FX segment stood at $108.83 million and it rose to $121.15 million the next day.

At the midweek trading session, the forex turnover significantly jumped to $266.32 million but went down to $124.35 million on Thursday before rising broadly to $359.48 million at the close of the week.

A look at the performance of the Naira at the I&E window in the week showed that it depreciated week-on-week against the United States Dollar by 92 kobo or 0.22 per cent.

This was because the domestic currency was traded last Friday at N414.30/$1 as against the preceding week’s rate of N413.38/$1.

The decline may have been influenced by a significant increase in the demand for FX at the market segment, while the supply of forex to FX traders could not meet customers’ requests.

A breakdown showed that at the first trading session of the week, the Nigerian currency was exchanged at N413.55/$1 and the next day, it fell to N414.30/$1 and further depreciated to N414.73/$1 on Wednesday before appreciating to N414.67/$1 on Thursday and the next day, it further appreciated to N414.30/$1.

Also, at the interbank segment of the market, the Nigerian Naira depreciated against the American greenback week-on-week by one kobo or 0.01 per cent as it quoted N410.81/$1 last Friday compared with N410.80/$1 it traded at the preceding Friday.