Transactions on I&E FX Window Fall 26.9% to $851m in One Week

By Sodeinde Temidayo David

The weekly turnover at the Investors and Exporters (I&E) window of the foreign exchange (forex) market last week as monitored by Business Post stood at $851.1 million.

The data from the FMDQ Securities Exchange, which tracks trades on the Nigerian Autonomous Foreign Exchange Rate Fixing (NAFEX) platform, showed that the transactions made at the I&E FX window last week were 26.9 per cent or $312.6 million lower than the $1.1 billion recorded a week earlier.

As close look into this showed that this decline may have been caused by the one-day-break observed in the week, precisely on Tuesday, October 19, to mark the Eid-el-Maulud holiday.

Amid this, the value of total transactions achieved last week was significantly driven by the trading made at the mid-week, as $334.97 was recorded as turnover for the session.

Also at the close of the week, on Friday, the transactions valued at $240.97 million were carried out. At the first trading session of last week, the turnover was $172 million and on Thursday it stood at $103.16 million.

In the four-day trading sessions, the average daily value of forex trades recorded at the window was $212.8 million in contrast to the $232.7 million recorded at the preceding week.

Looking at the performance of the local currency, it was observed that the value of the Naira closed week-on-week at N415.07/$1, the same rate it closed a week earlier.

This may have come as a surprise to observers as the exchange rate of the domestic currency to the United States Dollar has been wavering.

This was due to comments made by the Vice President, Mr Yemi Osinbajo, about the FX policies of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) under the leadership of its governor, Mr Godwin Emefiele.

The VP had advised the monetary authorities to allow the domestic currency to find its true value at the foreign currency market through forces of demand and supply instead of the regulated system being operated by the apex bank.

Last Monday, the domestic currency traded at N414.73/$1 at the I&E segment and appreciated to N414.07/$1 on Wednesday, but depreciated to N415.07/$ on Thursday and closed flat at N415.07/$1 on Friday.

At the interbank segment of the market, on a week-on-week change, the Nigerian currency fell by 0.01 per cent or 5 kobo against the American Dollar to trade at N410.96/$1 in contrast to N410.91/$1 of the previous week.