By Adedapo Adesanya
The value of the Naira to a Pound Sterling at the parallel market was weakened at the foreign exchange market on Wednesday, December 4, 2019 as the general elections in the United Kingdom draw nearer.
This came on the premise that investors see a Conservative majority on December 12 as the most market-positive outcome, as it would allow Prime Minister Boris Johnson to push his Brexit deal through Parliament in time for next month’s deadline and move on to the next phase of talks with the European Union.
As all these permutations are going on in the UK, the value of the Nigerian currency to the British legal tender is going down. At the black market yesterday, the local currency depreciated by N1 to trade at N466/£1 compared with N465/£1 it traded on Tuesday.
However, the Naira closed flat against the Euro at the same forex market segment, exchanging at N396/€1, the same rate it was exchanged at the previous session.
In the same vein, the domestic currency remained unchanged N360 against the US Dollar at the parallel market.
At the Investors and Exporters (I&E) segment, the Naira appreciated by 0.03 percent equivalent to 10 Kobo to trade at N362. 61/$1 compared with N362.71/$1 it traded at the previous session.
The rise came despite a jump in the volume of transactions recorded at the market window. Transactions worth $456.46 million were carried out at the investors’ segment, higher than the $62.49 million exchanged on Tuesday. This indicated that the value of the trades significantly increased by 630.5 percent or $393.97 million at the midweek session.
A look at the interbank window of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), the local currency traded flat against the American currency, closing at N306.95/$1, the same rate it finished the previous day.
Dipo Olowookere