Naira Regains Strength at Black Market, I&E, Peer-to-Peer

By Adedapo Adesanya

The Naira gained against the United States Dollar at the Peer-to-Peer (P2P), black market, and the Investors and Exporters (I&E) segments of the foreign exchange market on Thursday, April 6.

In the P2P forex window, the value of the Nigerian currency appreciated against the Dollar by N2 to close at N748/$1 compared with Wednesday’s closing rate of N750/$1.

In the parallel market, the Naira gained N1 against the greenback during the session to finish at N738/$1 compared with the preceding day’s value of N739/$1.

In the same vein, the local currency was strengthened against its American counterpart at the I&E window by 50 kobo or 0.11 per cent to close at N463.25/$1, in contrast to the N463.50/$1 it was exchanged a day earlier.

According to data from FMDQ Securities Exchange, the spot market witnessed a surge in forex transactions by 35.48 per cent or $26.57 million yesterday to $101.45 million from the $74.88 million recorded in the previous day.

There will be no trading of FX in the official market today because the federal government declared Friday, April 7, and Monday, April 10 as public holidays for the Easter celebration.

In the interbank segment, the exchange rate of the Naira to the Pound Sterling and the Euro remained unchanged on Thursday at N574.97/£1 and N502.11/€1, respectively.

The cryptocurrency market was down yesterday most of the tokens tracked by Business Post ended in the red section of the ecosystem.

This came as markets consolidated ahead of Friday’s non-farm payrolls report. Payrolls are expected to come in at 240,000 for last month, with the unemployment rate in the US remaining at 3.6 per cent.

Leading the losers was Dogecoin (DOGE), which slumped 9.9 per cent to trade at $0.0828 after Twitter returned to its original logo, after using a mascot associated with the coin, pushing investors to mop up the coin.

Bitcoin (BTC) dropped 0.2 per cent to sell at $27,967.14, Ethereum (ETH) lost 0.9 per cent to quote at $1,868.87, Cardano (ADA) shed 2.0 per cent to finish at $0.3808, Solana (SOL) fell by 1.6 per cent to $20.41, Litecoin (LTC) lost 1.5 per cent to trade at $90.66, and Binance Coin (BNB) recorded a 0.6 per cent depreciation to close at $311.56.

However, Ripple (XRP) gained 1.9 per cent to trade at $0.5125, while Binance USD (BUSD) and the US Dollar Tether (USDT) retained parity at $1.00 each.