Naira Regains Strength Against Dollar After July Headwinds

By Adedapo Adesanya

There was relative ease for the Naira against the US Dollar across the various segments of the foreign exchange (FX) market on Monday, August 1 after going through headwinds in July triggered by speculative demand for hard currencies.

The Naira appreciated against the American currency in the Peer-to-Peer (P2P), Investors and Exporters (I&E) and the black market windows of the forex market.

In the P2P segment, the local currency gained N36 against the greenback to sell for N700/$1 compared to the N736/$1 it was traded last Friday.

In the I&E segment, the domestic currency appreciated against the Dollar by 12 Kobo or 0.03 per cent to sell for N428.88/$1 in contrast to the previous session’s rate of N429.00/$1.

Data from FMDQ Securities Exchange revealed that the value of FX transactions at the market segment marginally rose by 0.47 per cent or $280,000 to $60.27 million yesterday from last Friday’s $59.59 million.

In the interbank segment of the market, the Naira, however, lost N5.37 against the Pound Sterling to settle at N509.58/£1 versus the preceding session’s N504.21/£1 and against the Euro, the local currency fell by N5.17 to N426.49/€1 from N421.32/€1.

At the black market, the Nigerian currency was quoted against the US currency at N680/$1.

Meanwhile, at the digital currency market, the bears dominated as nine of the 10 benchmarked currencies tracked by Business Post were bearish.

TerraClassicUSD (USTC) further moved downward by 10.5 per cent to sell for $0.0345, Ethereum (ETH) declined by 5.9 per cent to sell at $1,578.79, Solana (SOL) depreciated by 5.2 per cent to $40.26, and Cardano (ADA) dropped 4.3 per cent to trade at $0.4933.

Further, Dogecoin (DOGE) went down by 3.6 per cent to trade at $0.0663, Litecoin (LTC) fell by 3.5 per cent to trade at $57.27, Binance Coin (BNB) recorded a 2.5 per cent loss to sell at $276.77, Ripple (XRP) recorded a 2.1 per cent fall to trade at $0.3712 while Bitcoin (BTC) retreated by 1.5 per cent to $22,826.79.

However, the US Dollar Tether (USDT) retained its recent pared level of $1.00.