Naira Weakens to N1,627/$1 at NAFEM, N1,623/$1 at Black Market

By Adedapo Adesanya

The Nigerian Naira depreciated against the US Dollar in the Nigerian Autonomous Foreign Exchange Market (NAFEM) on Friday, March 8 saw by by 1.6 per cent or N25.23 to N1,627.40/$1 compared with the previous day’s N1,602.17/$1.

Also, in the official market, its value weakened against the Pound Sterling yesterday by N13.31 to close at N2,036.13/£1 versus Thursday’s closing price of N2,022.82/£1 and against the Euro, it declined by N8.87 to trade at N1,740.38/€1, in contrast to the preceding session’s N1,731.51/€1.

Data from the FMDQ Securities Exchange revealed that the Nigerian currency suffered these losses during the session despite an improvement in the supply of forex into the spot market.

FX transactions worth $269.35 million were completed on the last trading day of the week at NAFEM, 63.5 per cent or $104.59 million higher than the $164.76 million recorded a day earlier.

Apprehension from recent moves to deter speculators in the FX market had forced the rates to appreciate, but it seems things have eased just as supply remains a major issue affecting the stability of the rates.

This may have affected the parallel market on Friday as the Nigerian Naira lost N3 against the Dollar to sell for N1,623/$1 versus Thursday’s rate of N1,620/$1, showing convergence between the official and black market rates.

As for the digital currency market, it remained positive yesterday across the benchmarked tokens tracked by Business Post. The spike has a lot to do with Bitcoin (BTC) which jumped to $68,000.

The reason for Bitcoin’s rise in recent days likely has to do with its upcoming halving, an event that happens about every four years, with the next expected in or around April. When a halving has occurred in the past, Bitcoin prices have traditionally risen around it.

Bitcoin (BTC) rose by 2.1 per cent to $68,369.40 while the second most-valued coin, Ethereum (ETH), added 1.0 per cent to trade at $3,928.85.

However, the biggest beneficiary of the development has been memcoins like Dogecoin (DOGE) which saw a value appreciation of 5.8 per cent to $0.01714.

Binance Coin (BNB) rose by 3.9 per cent to $489,04, Solana (SOL) recorded a 2.0 per cent jump to trade at $147.07, Ripple (XRP) appreciated by 0.7 per cent to $0.6284, Litecoin (LTC) grew by 0.4 per cent to $88.60, and the US Dollar Tether (USDT) expanded by 0.08 per cent to $1.00.

But Cardano (ADA) went down by 0.4 per cent to quote at $0.7323, and the US Dollar Coin (USDC) lost 0.03 per cent to settle at $0.0998.