By Adedapo Adesanya
The Naira opened the new week with a marginal 0.04 per cent or N67 Kobo gain on the US Dollar in the Nigerian Autonomous Foreign Exchange Market (NAFEM) on Monday, August 19 to close at N1,579.22/$1, in contrast to last Friday’s closing price of N1,579.89/$1.
Equally, the domestic currency weakened against the British currency, the Pound Sterling, in the official market yesterday by N8.10 to wrap the session at N2,041.46/£1 versus the previous trading value of N2,033.36/£1 and lost N1.71 against the Euro to sell at N1,739.40/€1 compared with the preceding session’s N1,737.69/€1.
The poor performance of the local currency happened amid a 41.4 per cent or $47.76 million rise in the FX turnover to $162.99 million from $115.23 million at the last trading day.
However, the Nigerian currency closed flat against the Dollar in the parallel market on Monday at N1,605/$1, according to data obtained by Business Post.
The recent volatility in the forex market has occurred despite moves by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) to stabilise the currency market.
On Monday, the first tranche of a $500 million domestic Dollar bond sale went on as part of the federal government’s effort to raise $2 billion to cover deficits in the N28.8 trillion 2024 budget and prop up the FX market.
Meanwhile, Ripple (XRP) outshined others in the cryptocurrency market yesterday with a 4.1 per cent appreciation to close at $0.596, followed by Binance Coin (BNB), which gained 3.2 per cent to sell for $554.91, and Litecoin (LTC) improved by 0.4 per cent to $66.68.
On the flip side, Solana (SOL) recorded a 2.0 per cent depreciation to sell at $143.42, Dogecoin (DOGE) fell by 1.6 per cent to $0.1005, Ethereum (ETH) went down by 1.4 per cent to $2,616.16, Cardano (ADA) made a loss of 1.2 per cent to trade at $0.3351, Bitcoin (BTC) declined by 1.1 per cent to $59,050.27, and the US Dollar Tether (USDT) and US Dollar Coin (USDC) remained unchanged at $1.00 each.
Dipo Olowookere