Naira Slips Further Against Dollar to N1,350/$1 at Official Market

By Adedapo Adesanya

Pressure continued to pile on the Naira, weakening further against the US Dollar by N1.52 or 0.11 per cent in the Nigerian Autonomous Foreign Exchange Market (NAFEM) on Tuesday to N1,350.86/$1 from Monday’s N1,349.34/$1.

Equally, the domestic currency lost N2.84 against the Pound Sterling in the official market during the session to N1,813.39/£1 from N1,810.55/£1, and dipped against the Euro by N4.40 to N1,514.85/€1 from the preceding session’s N1,510.45/€1.

But the local currency traded flat against the United States currency at the parallel market at N1,375/$1 and also closed flat at the GTBank forex desk at N1,357/$1.

The negative outcome came amid increasing seasonal pressure on the Nigerian currency, as data from the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) showed that interbank FX turnover rose by 17.9 per cent to $248.071 million from $210.375 million, with the number of FX deals up to 144 deals from 116 deals.

Ease in risk-on sentiment for the US Dollar that would have been positive for the Nigerian FX market is also contributing to the loss.

Analysts also cited trends of pre-election demand for Dollars; however, those claims about political office holders ramping up foreign currency remain unconfirmed.

In the cryptocurrency market, the majority of benchmarked coins were down as Headline CPI in the US rose a faster-than-forecast 0.4 per cent in October.

The core CPI rate — which excludes food and energy costs — rose 0.3 per cent versus 0.3 per cent in September and forecasts of 0.2 per cent.

It remained well above the Federal Reserve’s 2 per cent target, setting up the economy for another rate hike at the US central bank’s final meeting of the year next month.

Ripple (XRP) dropped by 4.6 per cent to $1.05, Solana (SOL) lost 4.3 per cent to sell at $82.44, Dogecoin (DOGE) slipped by 3.5 per cent to $0.0675, Cardano (ADA) contracted by 3.1 per cent to $0.1735, and Ethereum (ETH) dipped 2.9 per cent to $2,054.00.

Further, Binance Coin (BNB) fell by 1.8 per cent to $676.86, Bitcoin (BTC) crumbled by 1.4 per cent to $73,556.77, and TRON (TRX) shrank by 0.3 per cent to $0.3172, while the US Dollar Tether (USDT) and the US Dollar Coin (USDC) remained unchanged at $1.00 apiece.