Naira Appreciates at I&E at 2022 Final Session

By Adedapo Adesanya

The Naira closed the final session for the year 2022 on a stronger foot at the Peer-2-Peer (P2P), the black market, and the Investors and Exporters (I&E) windows of the foreign exchange (forex) market on Friday, December 30.

The Naira further gained N12 at the P2P market as buyers and sellers exchanged it at an aggregate rate of N753/$1, in contrast to the N765/$1 it was traded at the preceding session.

In the I&E window or the spot market, the Nigerian Naira appreciated against the greenback by 17 Kobo or 0.04 per cent to trade at N461.50/$1 compared with the previous day’s 461.67/$1, according to data obtained from FMDQ Securities Exchange.

The local currency appreciated yesterday despite a rise in the FX turnover in the official market by 23.9 per cent or $34.05 million to $176.24 million from the preceding day’s $142.19 million.

In the parallel market, the domestic currency gained N3 against the United States currency on Friday to quote at N739/$1, in contrast to Thursday’s exchange rate of N742/$1.

However, the fate of the local currency was different at the interbank segment as it fell against the Pound Sterling by N1.06 to close at N540.70/£1, in contrast to the preceding session’s N539.64/£1, and against the Euro, it lost N2.16 to settle at N479.45/€1 compared with the previous day’s N477.29/€1.

As for the digital currency market, there were a few recoveries as Solana (SOL) chalked up 12.6 per cent to sell at $9.89, while Litecoin (LTC) gained 2.2 per cent to trade at $67.96, and Cardano (ADA) improved by 0.02 per cent to close at $0.2442.

However, Dogecoin (DOGE) saw a value depreciation of 3.3 per cent to sell at $0.0685, Ripple (XRP) slid by 0.4 per cent to trade at $0.3432, Binance Coin (BNB) went down by 0.3 per cent to finish at $245.07, Bitcoin (BTC) dropped 0.3 per cent to sell for $16,552.06, and Ethereum (ETH) declined by 0.1 per cent to trade at $1,159.99.

Meanwhile, both Binance USD (BUSD) and the US Dollar Tether (USDT) remained unchanged at $1.00 apiece.