Adedapo Adesanya
By Adedapo Adesanya
The Nigerian Naira suffered heavy declines at the black market, Peer-to-Peer (P2P), and the Investors and Exporters (I&E) windows of the foreign exchange (forex) market on Thursday, October 27.
This is coming as the FX market is beginning to react to the decision of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) to redesign the N200, N500, and N1,000 banknotes.
The apex bank at said on Wednesday it would introduce the new Naira notes into circulation from December 15, 2022, and would expect the complete face-out of the current notes by January 31, 2023.
This announcement was sudden, and the short time given for the exchange of the old notes for the new notes is already putting pressure on the local currency at the forex market.
Yesterday, in the spot market, the Naira depreciated against the United States Dollar by N2.83 or 0.64 per cent to close at N444.50/$1 compared with the previous day’s N441.67/$1. This was the lowest level the domestic currency has fallen in the market window.
During the session, transactions valued at $100.90 million were executed compared with the $81.04 million completed in the midweek session, representing an increase of $19.50 million or 24.1 per cent.
At the parallel market, the local currency shed N4 or 0.52 per cent against the greenback to close at N769/$1 compared with the preceding day’s value of N765/$1.
In the P2P FX segment, the Nigerian currency fell by N11 or 1.4 per cent against its American counterpart to trade at N785/$1, in contrast to Wednesday’s rate of N774/$1.
At the interbank window, the Naira, however, closed flat against the Pound Sterling and the Euro at N506.64/£1 and N439.08/€1, respectively.
Meanwhile, the cryptocurrency market was bearish on Thursday investors sold off the assets amid renewed worries, with Cardano (ADA) losing 5.9 per cent to trade at $0.3864, and Dogecoin (DOGE) going down by 5.8 per cent to $0.0749.
Further, Solana (SOL) went down by 4.2 per cent to sell at $30.66, Litecoin (LTC) slumped by 3.4 per cent to trade at $54.62, Ethereum (ETH) declined by 3.1 per cent to $1,515.29, Ripple (XRP) recorded a 2.6 per cent slide to trade at $0.4617, Bitcoin (BTC) lost 2.5 per cent to close at $20,289.27, while Binance Coin (BNB) shed 1.6 per cent to sell for $287.66.
But the US Dollar Tether (USDT) and Binance USD (BUSD) remained unchanged at $1.00 each.
