By Adedapo Adesanya
The Naira depreciated against the US Dollar in the Nigerian Autonomous Foreign Exchange Market (NAFEM) on Thursday, November 17 amid a continued foreign exchange (FX) liquidity squeeze.
In the official segment of the market, the domestic currency lost N22.15 or 2.71 per cent against the greenback to settle at N841.14/$1 compared with Wednesday’s exchange rate of N818.99/$1.
It was observed that some customers in the spot market were ready to exchange the Naira to a Dollar at N1.140/$1 during the trading session, while some offered it at N600/$1.
Data obtained by Business Post showed that the supply of forex into the market window depreciated by $45.86 million or 26.4 per cent to $127.65 million from the preceding session’s $173.53 million.
Mr Yemi Cardoso, the Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), who took office in September, has been silent about where he wants to see the trading band for the naira or when further liquidity might be injected into the market.
The CBN has not intervened in the official market since October, which has helped accelerate the naira’s slide, according to traders.
In the Peer-2-Peer (P2P) window, the local currency also depreciated against its American pair by N1 to settle at N1,114/$1 compared with the previous day’s N1,113/$1.
But in the parallel market, the Nigerian currency appreciated against the US Dollar yesterday by N5 to close at N1,130/$1, in contrast to the midweek session rate of N1,135/$1.
This newspaper reports that the Naira gained N18.10 against the Pound Sterling to sell at N1,029.74/£1 versus N1,047.84/£1 and improved against the Euro by N12.82 to close at N898.45/€1 versus N911.27/€1.
In the cryptocurrency market, Bitcoin (BTC) and a host of other benchmarked currencies traded down as a result of BlackRock Ethereum ETF filing, giving up some gains in the last 24 hours.
While the filing spurred fresh positive sentiment in the crypto market, traders quickly moved to close their positions, with BTC losing about 3.9 per cent to close at $35,995.69.
Solana (SOL) slid by 5.9 per cent to sell at $62.28, Ethereum (ETH) went down by 4.3 per cent to $1,962.88, Binance Coin (BNB) dropped 3.9 per cent to sell for $242.57, Ripple (XRP) shrank by 3.9 per cent to trade at $0.6189, Litecoin (LTC) declined by 3.2 per cent to $71.13, and Cardano (ADA) lost 1.5 per cent to finish at $0.3702, while Dogecoin (DOGE) gained 6.2 per cent to sell at $0.08, with the US Dollar Tether (USDT) and Binance USD (BUSD) remaining unchanged at $1.00 each.
Dipo Olowookere