Naira Now N782/$1 at Official Market, N927/$1 at P2P, N915/$1 at Black

By Adedapo Adesanya

The Nigerian Naira weakened on the American Dollar across the various segments of the foreign exchange (forex) market on Monday; the Investors and Exporters (I&E), parallel market, and the Peer-2-Peer (P2P) windows.

This was caused by the persistent FX liquidity issues in the country, which are putting pressure on the domestic currency, eroding its value.

The Naira lost N24.87 or 3.28 per cent against the greenback during the trading session to quote at N782.38/$1 compared with the preceding day’s value of N757.51/$1, as the FX transactions jumped by 31.1 per cent or $14.28 million to $60.26 million from the $45.98 million quoted on Tuesday.

In the P2P arm of the market, the local currency N15 against its American counterpart in the midweek session to close at N927/$1 versus the N908/$1 it was sold a day earlier.

In the same vein, the Naira depreciated against the US Dollar yesterday by N15 to sell at N915/$1, in contrast to Tuesday’s closing price of N900/$1.

It was the same outcome for the Pound Sterling in the official market on Wednesday as the Nigerian currency shed N4.38 to finish at N977.41/£1 compared with the previously traded rate of N973.03/£1 and against the Euro, it fell by N3.94 to trade at N841.82/€1 compared with the previous day’s N838.54/€1.

A look at the crypto market showed that most of the tokens fell as investors braced for July consumer price index data out from the US on Thursday.

Expectations are high that the inflation rate in the world’s largest economy will come in at 3.3 per cent, slightly higher than the 3 per cent seen in June.

Bitcoin (BTC) slid by 0.9 per cent to sell at $29,489.26, Ethereum (ETH) dropped 0.4 per cent to $1,849.31, Solana (SOL) crashed by 1.3 per cent to $24.17, Ripple (XRP) recorded a 1.2 per cent loss to $0.636, Binance Coin (BNB) slid by 0.7 per cent to $243.01, and Litecoin (LTC) went down by 0.1 per cent to $83.91.

However, Dogecoin (DOGE) gained 0.8 per cent to sell at $0.0756, Cardano (ADA) grew by 0.3 per cent to trade at $0.299, while the US Dollar Tether (USDT) and Binance USD (BUSD) traded flat at $1.00 each.