Naira Hits New Low of N461.67/$1 at Official Market

By Adedapo Adesanya

The Naira was under pressure at the Investors and Exporters (I&E) segment of the foreign exchange market on Thursday, December 29, hitting a new low against the United States Dollar at the close of business.

Data showed that the Nigerian Naira depreciated against the Dollar at the official market yesterday by 0.07 per cent or 34 Kobo to quote at N461.67/$1 compared with the previous day’s value of N461.33/$1.

This happened amid a drop in forex turnover for the trading session. The value of FX trades during the session was $142.19 million, 27.5 per cent or $53.87 million lower than the $196.06 million reported a day earlier.

However, in the peer-to-peer (P2P) window of the market, the value of the Nigerian currency appreciated against the American currency by N13 to close at N765/$1, in contrast to the previous day’s N778/$1.

In the black market, the local currency maintained stability against the United States currency on Thursday, closing flat at N742/$1.

In the interbank window, the Naira gained N1.60 against the Pound Sterling to sell at N539.64/£1 compared with Wednesday’s rate of N541.24/£1, but against the Euro, it lost 13 Kobo to settle at N477.27/€1 versus the midweek session’s N477.16/€1.

In a related development, the cryptocurrency market continued to hold bearish sentiments as Solana (SOL) continued its worsening outcome as it fell by 13.4 per cent yesterday to sell at $8.54.

The token’s loss comes as more crypto projects bail on the Solana ecosystem. Earlier this week, two of the Solana blockchain’s top NFT collections, DeGods, and Y00ts, were planning to migrate to other systems.

Ripple (XRP) recorded a 5.3 per cent slump to trade at $0.3403, Cardano (ADA) fell by 3.2 per cent to close at $0.2433, Litecoin (LTC) slipped by 1.5 per cent to trade at $66.31, Dogecoin (DOGE) went down by 1.2 per cent to quote at $0.07037, and Bitcoin (BTC) slumped by 0.1 per cent to sell at $16,593.99.

But Binance Coin (BNB) recorded a 0.7 per cent appreciation to trade at $245.44, while Ethereum (ETH) grew by 0.1 per cent to sell at $1,196.13, with Binance USD (BUSD) and the US Dollar Tether (USDT) closing flat at $1.00, each.