By Adedapo Adesanya
The Nigerian Naira recorded its best performance in over a month against the US Dollar in the Nigerian Autonomous Foreign Exchange Market (NAFEM) on Monday, May 27 as it rose by 9.7 per cent or N143.48 to trade at N1,339.33/$1 compared with last Friday’s value of N1,482.81/$1 as the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) stepped up efforts to cushion recent drops.
Also, the Naira improved its value against the Pound Sterling in the official market by N1 to close at N1,884.28/£1 versus the previous session’s N1,885.28/£1 and chalked up N2.61 against the Euro to close at N1,607.31/€1 versus N1,609.95/€1.
Data from the FMDQ Securities Exchange indicated that the value of FX trades at the spot market declined by 67.5 per cent or $375.45 million to $180.80 million from the $556.25 million recorded in the preceding session.
NAFEM has witnessed improved forex liquidity and this has been attributed to the apex bank’s aggressive liquidity management strategy, which saw the raising of about N1.16 trillion from the OMO bill auction in fresh efforts to control inflationary pressures and stabilise the domestic currency.
But at the parallel market, the domestic currency depreciated against the greenback during the trading session by N5 to sell at N1,505/$1 compared with the preceding session’s rate of N1,510/$1.
As for the digital currency market, it was largely bearish, with Ethereum (ETH) losing momentum after surging recently ahead of the imminent launch of spot ETH ETFs within the next two months. It fell by 1.3 per cent to $3,841.87, and Litecoin (LTC) declined by 1.2 per cent to $82.03.
Further, Cardano (ADA) waned by 1.0 per cent to $0.4556, Binance Coin (BNB) lost 0.9 per cent to trade at $596.56, Bitcoin (BTC) dipped by 0.8 per cent to $67,771.04, Ripple (XRP) slumped by 0.5 per cent to $0.5241, and Dogecoin (DOGE) plunged by 0.1 per cent to sell at $0.1644.
However, Solana (SOL) gained 0.8 per cent to settle at $165.93, while the US Dollar Tether (USDT) and the US Dollar Coin (USDC) remained unchanged at $1.00 each.
