Naira Slumps to N869/$1 at Official Market, N1014/$1 at P2P

By Adedapo Adesanya

The Naira depreciated further against the US Dollar in the Nigerian Autonomous Foreign Exchange Market (NAFEM) on Tuesday, November 7, as the supply of foreign exchange (FX) into the system shrinks.

Data from the FMDQ Securities Exchange showed that forex transactions worth $70.92 million were recorded during the trading session, 19.1 per cent or $16.73 million lower than the $87.65 million achieved in the preceding session.

Last week, the Nigerian currency gained weight on the greenback after it was reported that about 2 per cent of FX backlogs had been cleared, but it failed to sustain the positive momentum, as its value weakened yesterday by N60.89 or 7.5 per cent to settle at N869.91/$1 compared with Monday’s rate of N809.02/$1.

In the Peer-to-Peer (P2P) segment of the forex market, the local currency declined against the American currency on Tuesday by N34 to close at N1,014/$1, in contrast to the preceding day’s N980/$1.

It was not a scenario in the parallel market window as the value of the domestic currency depleted against the Dollar during the session by N70 to settle at N1,030/$1 compared with the N960/$1 value it closed a day earlier.

Further, the Nigerian Naira lost N21.61 against the Pound Sterling in the spot market on Tuesday to close at N988.04/£1 versus the previous day’s N966.43/£1 and against the Euro, the local currency shed N18.44 to finish at N857.83/€1 versus N839.39/€1.

In the cryptocurrency market, Solana (SOL) continued to fly high as it further rose by 4.8 per cent to sell at $43.29.  The move comes amid the continued rollout of the Cardano Midnight protocol, a privacy-centric blockchain drawing from many of the same components as Cardano.

Last week, the protocol opened its doors to the first wave of developers called Midnight Pioneers who can begin building on the network.

Another price gainer for the session was Bitcoin (BTC), which improved its value by  0.8 per cent to $35,224.69.

However, Binance Coin (BNB) depreciated by 2.7 per cent to $245.42, Ripple (XRP) shed 2.5 per cent to $0.6767, Dogecoin (DOGE) dropped 2.0 per cent to quote at $0.0734, Cardano (ADA) fell by 1.1 per cent to $0.3528, Litecoin (LTC) slumped by 1.0 per cent to $72.69, Ethereum (ETH) went down by 0.9 per cent to $1,876.39, while the US Dollar Tether (USDT) and Binance USD (BUSD) traded flat at $1.00 each.