Naira Appreciates As Forex Market Finds Direction

By Adedapo Adesanya

The Naira appreciated against the American Dollar at the Peer-2-Peer (P2P), parallel market, and the Investors and Exporters (I&E) segments of the foreign exchange market on Wednesday, March 1.

The market found direction after the country’s electoral umpire, the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), declared Mr Bola Ahmed Tinubu of the ruling party, the All Progressives Congress (APC), as the winner of the February 25 presidential election.

The Nigerian currency gained N2 against its US counterpart yesterday in the P2P window to trade at N766/$1, in contrast to N768/$1 it was transacted on Tuesday.

In the official market segment, the Naira chalked up 65 Kobo or 0.14 per cent against the greenback to settle at N461.35/$1 versus the preceding day’s rate of N462.00/$1 despite a surge in the value of FX transactions.

According to data from FMDQ Securities Exchange, the turnover for the trading day was $98.60 million, $50.51 million or 105.0 per cent higher than the $48.09 million recorded in the preceding session.

In the black market, the domestic currency improved against the US Dollar yesterday by N1 to quote at N751/$1 compared with the previous day’s exchange rate of N752/$1.

However, the local currency depreciated against the Pound Sterling in the interbank segment of the forex market in the midweek session by N5.25 to close at N577.77/£1 compared with Tuesday’s N552.52/£1 and lost N2.44 against the Euro to end the day at N489.41/€1 versus N486.97/€1.

In a related development, the cryptocurrency market was mixed on Wednesday as upbeat Chinese manufacturing data alleviated global growth concerns and improved risk appetite in global financial markets.

Bitcoin (BTC) rose by 0.2 per cent to $23,508.07, Ethereum (ETH) jumped by 1.1 per cent to $1,649.00, Litecoin (LTC) leapt by 1.4 per cent to $97.05, and Ripple (XRP) inflated by 0.9 per cent to $0.3791.

But Binance Coin (BNB) went down by 1.5 per cent to $299.25, Solana (SOL) slumped by 1.3 per cent to trade at $21.99, Dogecoin (DOGE) depreciated by 0.9 per cent to sell at $0.0809, and Cardano (ADA) lost 0.5 per cent to trade at $0.3554, while Binance USD (BUSD) and the US Dollar Tether (USDT) remained unchanged at $1.00 apiece.