By Adedapo Adesanya
The Naira appreciated against the United States Dollar in the Nigerian Autonomous Foreign Exchange Market (NAFEM) on Monday, February 5 after the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) Governor, Mr Olayemi Cardoso, said the country has almost cleared a backlog of FX contracts that have weighed on the local currency and dealt it with some infractions.
The Naira gained 1.1 per cent or N15.67 on the greenback yesterday to close at N1,419.00/$1 compared with last Friday’s closing value of N1,435.53/$1.
Also, the Nigerian currency improved its value against the Pound Sterling in the spot market during the trading day by N57.83 to settle at N1,732.88/£1 versus the preceding session’s N1,790.71/£1 and against the Euro, it chalked up N52.67 to sell for N1,477.98/€1 versus the previous session’s N1,530.65/€1.
The local currency withstood forex demand pressure on the first trading session of the week as the value of transactions remained unchanged at $440.13 million.
Speaking during a television interview aired on Monday, Mr Cardoso said the bank conducted a forensic audit and found that out of the $7 billion, around $2.4 billion of the claims could not be verified as there were not documents to back them up.
According to the banker, the problematic FX claims included instances where entities did not have valid import documents, entities that did not exist received allocations, and cases where entities received more forex than they requested or received allocations without requesting any.
He said the CBN had already cleared $2.3 billion of the valid claims, including those from airlines, and said the remaining $2.2 billion would be cleared soon.
However, in the parallel market, the Naira depreciated against the US Dollar yesterday by N30 to sell for N1,440/$1 compared with the preceding session’s N1,410/$1.
In the same vein, the domestic currency suffered a N50 loss against its American counterpart in the Peer-to-Peer (P2P) segment to quote at N1,459/$1 versus last Friday’s exchange rate of N1,409/$1.
In the cryptocurrency market, momentum dropped with some gains marred by heavier losses across benchmarked coins.
Litecoin (LTC) went up by 0.8 per cent to $67.71, Ethereum (ETH) rose by 0.7 per cent to $2,312.83, Bitcoin (BTC) appreciated by 0.2 per cent to $42,799.04, Dogecoin (DOGE) gained 0.1 per cent to sell at $0.0783, and Ripple (XRP) jumped by 0.1 per cent to $0.5063.
However, Solana (SOL) lost 1.1 per cent to settle at $95.66, Cardano (ADA) slid by 0.8 per cent to $0.4933, and Binance Coin (BNB) slumped by 0.6 per cent to $302.04, while the US Dollar Tether (USDT) and US Dollar Coin (USDC) traded flat at $1.00 each.
