By Adedapo Adesanya
The Naira further weakened against the US Dollar at the Investors and Exporters (I&E), black market, and the Peer-2-Peer (P2P) arms of the foreign exchange (FX) market on Wednesday, December 21, amid a shortage in the supply of the foreign currency.
In the I&E window, the Naira depreciated against its American pair by N3.66 or 0.81 per cent to close at N456.33/$1, in contrast to the preceding day’s value of N452.67/$1, according to data obtained from FMDQ Securities Exchange.
There are indications that the Nigerian currency has been officially devalued at this market segment by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) from the N430.00/$1 region.
The local currency suffered this significant loss amid a surge in the value of forex transactions in the official exchange rate window in the midweek session.
Data showed that traders carried out FX trades worth $377.48 million compared with the $134.04 million executed on Tuesday, indicating an increment of 181.6 per cent or $243.44 million.
In the P2P forex market segment, the domestic currency lost N8 against the United States currency yesterday to trade at N778/$1, in contrast to the N770/$1 it was sold a day earlier.
Also, in the parallel market, the Nigerian Naira depreciated against the greenback on Wednesday by N1 to sell for N746/$ compared with the previous day’s exchange rate of N745/$1.
However, the local currency was stronger against the Pound Sterling at the interbank segment of the forex market yesterday as it gained N3.21 to settle at N541.25/£1 versus Tuesday’s N544.46/£1, and against the Euro, it appreciated by 49 Kobo to end the day at N474.40/€1 compared with the preceding day’s N474.89/€1.
As for the digital currency market, there was a mixed movement across the benchmarked tokens tracked by Business Post.
The day’s highest gainer was Dogecoin (DOGE), which went northwards by 1.4 per cent to sell at $0.0736, while Litecoin (LTC) improved by 1.0 per cent to settle at $65.95.
Cardano (ADA) appreciated by 0.5 per cent to trade at $0.2527, Ripple (XRP) rose by 0.2 per cent to $0.3435, and Ethereum (ETH) jumped by 0.06 per cent to close at $1,211.98.
On the flip side, Binance Coin (BNB) slid by 0.7 per cent to $247.23, Bitcoin (BTC) fell by 0.07 per cent to $16,831.75, and Solana (SOL) recorded a 0.01 per cent slump to trade at $12.08.
But the US Dollar Tether (USDT) and the Binance USD (BUSD) closed flat at $1.00 each.
Modupe Gbadeyanka