Naira Trades N1,611/$1 at NAFEM, N1,600/$1 at Black Market

By Adedapo Adesanya

The Naira started the new week on a negative note on Monday after its value depreciated further by 0.13 per cent or N2.11 against the US Dollar in the Nigerian Autonomous Foreign Exchange Market (NAFEM), exchanging at N1,611.40/$1 versus the preceding session’s N1,609.29/$1.

Equally, the domestic currency also witnessed losses against the Pound Sterling and the Euro in the official market yesterday.

Data indicated that the local currency shed N6.85 against the British currency during the session to close at N2,068.45/£1 compared with last Friday’s closing price of N2,061.60/£1 and against the European currency, it weakened by 80 Kobo to settle at N1,741.61/€1, in contrast to the previous day’s N1,740.81/€1.

The local currency came under pressure despite a 6.4 per cent or $10.71 million rise in forex turnover in the spot market on Monday to $179.34 million from the $168.63 million recorded in the preceding trading session.

A look at the parallel market showed that the Nigerian Naira depreciated against the US Dollar yesterday by N10 to sell at N1,605/$1 compared with the preceding session’s rate of N1,595/$1.

The market’s weakening trajectory has not eased on recent moves by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) to stabilise the market with liquidity.

The CBN in the last week has sold Dollars to authorised dealers and Bureau De Change (BDC) operators more than thrice to cushion illiquidity worries in the market.

In the cryptocurrency market, there were rises across benchmarked currencies as momentum picked up with the gainers led by Litecoin (LTC), which went up by 4.0 per cent to $74.07, and Ethereum (ETH) gained 2.4 per cent to sell at $3,345.61.

Further, Ripple (XRP) recorded a 0.6 per cent jump to trade at $0.6042, Solana (SOL) improved by 0.3 per cent to quote at $184.49, and Cardano (ADA) expanded by 0.2 per cent to $0.4072.

On the flip side, Bitcoin (BTC) lost 1.2 per cent to settle at  $67,362.22, Binance Coin (BNB) dropped 0.7 per cent to $579.27, and Dogecoin (DOGE) crumbled by 0.4 per cent to $0.1291, while the US Dollar Tether (USDT) and US Dollar Coin (USDC) traded flat at $1.00 each.