Naira Loses 0.2% at Parallel Market, Gains 0.2% at I&E

By Adedapo Adesanya

The Naira depreciated by N1 or 0.2 per cent against the US Dollar at the parallel market on Tuesday, August 24, Business Post reports.

During the session, the value of the local currency closed at N521/$1 at the unregulated segment of the foreign exchange (FX) market compared with N520/$1 it was sold at the previous session.

Also, the domestic currency depreciated against the Pound Sterling yesterday by N2 to sell for N710/£1 versus the preceding day’s rate of N708/£1, while against the Euro, the Naira depreciated by N1 to settle at N605/€1 in contrast to Monday’s N604/€.

However, at the Investors and Exporters (I&E) window, the exchange rate of the Nigerian currency to its American counterpart favoured the former.

This was because the local currency closed stronger by 83 kobo or 0.2 per cent, quoting at N411/$1 as against N411.83/$1 it traded a day earlier.

Data showed that the strengthening of the indigenous currency was helped by a decline in FX transactions at the market window.

The value of trades recorded yesterday went down by 55.4 per cent or $96.18 million to $77.46 million from $173.64 million achieved at the preceding session.

A look at the interbank segment indicated that the value of Naira against the US Dollar slightly declined by 3 kobo or 0.01 per cent to N410.19 /$1 from N410.16/$1.

Cryptocurrencies Fall as Investors Take Profit

At the cryptocurrency market, profit-taking was the order of the day following the previous days’ gains as some more established financial services companies offer their customers access to virtual coins.

During the session, Litecoin (LTC) dropped 7.1 per cent to sell at N89,999.00, Ripple (XRP) fell by 6.4 per cent to trade at N602.13, while Tron (TRX) depreciated by 4.7 per cent to sell at N44.09.

In addition, Dash (DASH) lost 3.5 per cent to trade at N130,600, Bitcoin (BTC) went down by 2.9 per cent to close at N24,895,852.06, while Ethereum (ETH) declined by 1.9 per cent to close at N1,668,279.99.

But the US Dollar Tether (USDT) went in a different route on Tuesday as it moved northwards by 0.9 per cent to quote at N515.01.