Naira Appreciates to N470/$1 at Parallel Market

By Adedapo Adesanya

The Naira’s fighting spirit continued on Thursday and at the close of business, it finished stronger against the United States Dollar.

During the session, the local currency appreciated by N15 against the greenback to sell at N470/$1 compared with the N485/$1 it sold the previous day.

Also, the Nigerian currency closed stronger against the Pound Sterling yesterday by N15 to trade at N620/£1 versus N635/£1 it was traded at the midweek session and the local currency appreciated by N10 against the Euro to quote at N570/€1 compared with the previous value of N580/€1.

The local currency had faced its share of battering in the past few days as the official FX channels could not meet demands and customers had to turn to the black market for help.

The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) Governor, Mr Godwin Emefiele, had fired a salvo last week, calling the parallel market “a shadow market” and advised customers to always patronise the official windows created to meet their demands.

At the Bureaux De Change (BDC) segment of the market yesterday, the value of the Naira to the Dollar remained unchanged at N392/$1. It was a similar scenario at the interbank window of the forex market, where the Naira closed flat at N379/$1.

Equally, the local currency closed flat against the American currency at the Investors and Exporters (I&E) window on Thursday at N395/$1.

This occurred despite a spike in the demand for forex at the market segment by 173.3 per cent or $100.45 million to $158.42 million from the previous session’s $57.97 million.

A look at the cryptocurrency market yesterday showed that the market was in red as all but one of the tokens tracked by Business Post on Quidax depreciated.

The Bitcoin fell by 2.0 per cent to sell at N9,000,203.10, the Dash (DASH) depreciated by 3.9 per cent to N50,000.01, the Litecoin went down by 0.5 per cent to sell at N42,148.09, the Ethereum (ETH) lost 0.6 per cent to sell for N292,348.77, the Ripple (RPX) declined by 3.9 per cent to trade at N291.50, while the US Dollar Tether (USDT) lost 5.1 per cent to sell for N460.02.

Only the Tron (TRX) appreciated on Thursday as its value increased by 1.5 per cent to trade at N14.90.