Naira Sells N740/$1 at Official Market, N940/$1 at Parallel Market

By Adedapo Adesanya

The Nigerian Naira further strengthened on the American Dollar at the Investors and Exporters (I&E) window of the foreign exchange (FX) market on Friday, August 11.

Spurred by a strong supply, the local currency chalked up N40.72 or 5.2 per cent to close at N740.60/$1 compared with Thursday’s closing price of N781.34/$1.

Business Post observed that during the trading session, participants bid the Naira to the Dollar as high as N799.90/$1 and as low as N738.00/$1, amid a 180 per cent or $105.81 million increase in the value of forex transactions to $164.60 million from the $58.79 million quoted on Thursday.

In the parallel market, the Naira suffered a loss of N20 against the US Dollar yesterday to close at N940/$1, in contrast to the preceding day’s exchange rate of N920/$1.

In the Peer-to-Peer (P2P) segment of the FX marker, the local currency depreciated against the American currency by N4 to trade at N929/$1 versus N925/$1 of Thursday.

It was a positive outcome for the Nigerian currency against the Pound Sterling in the official market on Friday as it gained N26.06 to finish at N951.35/£1 compared with the previous day’s value of N977.41/£1 and against the Euro, it gained N20.22 to close at N820.77/€1, in contrast to the previous trading session’s N841.99/€1.

In the cryptocurrency market, tokens remain unshaken by the latest Consumer Price Index numbers, from the US, which showed a modest amount of inflation and in line with economists’ predictions.

In July, both the CPI and core CPI, which excludes food and energy prices, rose by 0.2 per cent from June. On an annual basis, CPI jumped by 3.2 per cent, and core CPI expanded by 4.7 per cent.

The relatively mild inflation numbers mean the US Federal Reserve will be less likely to raise rates at its next policy meeting in September.

At the market on Friday, Bitcoin (BTC) slid by 0.09 per cent to sell at $29,367.29, Cardano (ADA) depreciated by 1.2 per cent to trade at $0.2929, Solana (SOL) lost 0.6 per cent to quote at $24.45, Ripple (XRP) recorded a 0.5 per cent slide to trade at $0.6295, and Binance Coin (BNB) decreased by 0.1 per cent to $239.94.

On the positive side, Ethereum (ETH) went up by 0.02 per cent to $1,846.40, Litecoin (LTC) grew by 0.7 per cent to $83.62, Dogecoin (DOGE) improved by 0.3 per cent to $0.0759, while the US Dollar Tether (USDT) and Binance USD (BUSD) closed flat at $1.00 each.