Panic Intensifies as Naira Drops Further to N498/$1 at Black Market

By Adedapo Adesanya

Panic remained at the foreign exchange market on Tuesday and due to the sustained hoarding of FX, the Naira further depreciated against the US Dollar at the black market by N3.

Business Post reports that the value of the local currency closed at N498/$1 compared with N495/$1 it closed at the preceding session.

Also, the domestic currency lost N1 against the Euro at the unregulated FX market to settle at N597/€1 versus N596/€1 of the previous day.

However, the Nigerian currency traded flat against the Pound Sterling at the parallel market yesterday at N700/£1 after crashing by more N10 the prior day.

For another trading session, the Naira retained its previous closing rate against the greenback at the Investors and Exporters (I&E) window, N412/$1.

The stability was achieved as a result of a decrease in the value of transactions recorded at the I&E by $28.53 million or 22.7 per cent to $96.91 million from Monday’s $125.44 million.

As for the interbank segment of the market, the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) still auctioned the Dollar to commercial banks for government transactions at N410/$1 on Tuesday.

Meanwhile, as the cryptocurrency market, the majority of the digital currencies monitored by Business Post on the trading platform, Quidax, closed in the negative territory.

At the market on Tuesday, the value of the Ethereum (ETH) went down by 11.1 per cent to sell at N1,240,000.00, Litecoin (LTC) depreciated by 4.8 per cent to trade at N90,401.15, Bitcoin (BTC) declined by 2.3 per cent to quote at N18,372,411.57, Dash (DASH) went down by 1.0 per cent to sell at N98,997.00, while Ripple (XRP) declined by 0.1 per cent to trade at N509.99.

On the gainers’ wing, Tron (TRX) recorded a 0.8 per cent appreciation to sell at N38.00, while the US Dollar Tether (USDT) went up by 0.2 per cent to trade at N503.00.