Naira Falls Against Dollar as FX Scarcity Worsens

By Adedapo Adesanya

The Naira closed weaker against the United States Dollar at the Peer-to-Peer (P2P) window of the foreign exchange market on Wednesday, October 19 by N5 to close at N753/$1 compared with the preceding day’s N748/$1.

Also, in the parallel market, the value of the Naira to the Dollar depreciated by N3 to sell for N743/$1 in contrast to the N740/$1 it was traded a day earlier.

It was observed that the domestic currency performed badly against the greenback in the midweek session as a result of the consistent FX scarcity in Nigeria. Forex users are going through difficulty getting their needs from commercial banks, which the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) has authorised to sell to users.

However, in the Investors and Exporters (I&E) segment, the Nigerian currency closed flat against the American currency on Wednesday at N441.25/$1.

In the same vein, the exchange rate of the Naira to the Pound Sterling in the interbank segment of the market closed flat yesterday at N494.31/£1 and against the Euro, the Nigerian currency closed flat at N429.38/€1.

Meanwhile, in the cryptocurrency market, the outcome remained bearish as eight of the 10 tokens monitored by Business Post pointed south.

During the session, Solana (SOL) slumped by 2.4 per cent to sell at $29.23, Cardano (ADA) recorded a 1.1 per cent depreciation to trade at $0.355, Ethereum (ETH) saw its value go down by 0.9 per cent to quote at $1,292.30, Bitcoin (BTC) made a 0.8 per cent fall to settle at $19,138.16, Ripple (XRP) recorded a 0.4 per cent loss to trade at $0.4603, Binance Coin (BNB) made a 0.2 per cent depreciation to close at $271.69, and Dogecoin (DOGE) went down by 0.1 per cent to trade at $0.0598.

The only price gainer on Wednesday was Litecoin (LTC), which jumped by 0.3 per cent to trade at $51.71 as the value of Binance USD (BUSD) and the US Dollar Tether (USDT) remained unchanged during the session at $1.00, respectively.