By Adedapo Adesanya
The Nigerian Naira weakened further against the US Dollar in different segments of the foreign exchange (FX) market on Wednesday, November 22 as the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) continues to drag its feet on clearing over $8 billion in FX backlogs.
In the Nigerian Autonomous Foreign Exchange Market (NAFEM) window, the Nigerian Naira lost N9.56 or 1.2 per cent against the greenback in the midweek session to close at N840.53/$1 compared with the previous day’s value of N830.97/$1.
This happened despite an improvement in the supply of forex into the market segment by $75.75 million or 61.9 per cent to $198.21 million from the $122.46 million recorded on Tuesday.
In the Peer-to-Peer (P2P) window, the local currency depreciated against the Dollar yesterday by N3 to settle at N1,139/$1, in contrast to the N1,136/$1 it was sold a day earlier.
It was a similar situation for the Naira in the parallel market on Wednesday as it shrank by N15 against the American currency to trade at N1,160/$1 compared with Tuesday’s value of N1,145/$1.
However, the domestic currency put up a positive performance against the Pound Sterling in the spot market yesterday as it gained N10.69 to close at N1,009.58/£1 versus the preceding day’s N1,020.27/£1 and against the Euro, it improved its value by N12.66 to quote at N881.19/€1 compared with the previous day’s N893.85/€1.
As for the digital currency market, there was a large negative movement across the benchmarked tokens tracked by Business Post as pressure came on the market due to the resignation of Binance’s CEO, Mr Changpeng “CZ” Zhao, who has been the face of the industry for the past year following the collapse of FTX.
Although the market movement was negative, analysts say it does not yet suggest a dramatic change in the long-term view of the industry, Binance Coin (BNB) went south by 9.9 per cent to trade at $234.30 followed by Dogecoin (DOGE), which saw a value depreciation of 4.2 per cent to sell at $0.0743, and Solana (SOL) recorded a 4.1 per cent slump to trade at $54.59.
Cardano (ADA) dropped 3.7 per cent to close at $0.3694, Litecoin (LTC) declined by 3.4 per cent to $67.66, Ripple (XRP) lost 3.1 per cent to trade at $0.5952, Bitcoin (BTC) dipped by 2.1 per cent to $36,642.93, and Ethereum (ETH) fell by 0.3 per cent to $2,010.82, while Binance USD (BUSD) and the US Dollar Tether (USDT) remained unchanged at $1.00 apiece.
