Naira Falls to All-time Low On Official Window, Trades N1,348/$

 

The naira has taken a hit and has now fallen to an all-time low.

 

This is as the naira exchanged N1348.63/$ on the Nigerian Autonomous Foreign Exchange Market on Monday, according to Punch.

 

This signifies a 51.21 per cent fall from the N891.90/$ the national currency closed last Friday at the official market, according to data from the FMDQ Securities Exchange.

 

Monday’s official rate is the worst official exchange rate the country has recorded since the Central Bank of Nigeria floated the national currency in June 2023.

 

The naira had closed above the N1000/$ on the official window. On December 8, the naira first fell to an all-time low of N1,099.05/$. On December 28, 2023, it closed at N1043.09/$, and N1035.12/$ on January 3, 2024. On January 9, 2024, it closed at N1089.51/$ and N1082.32/$ on January 10, 2024.

 

This steep depreciation of the naira against the dollar is defying efforts by the Central Bank of Nigeria and Federal Government to boost liquidity in the foreign exchange market.

 

The national currency is also not faring better on the parallel window of the foreign exchange market. According to Bureau de Change Operators, the naira further fell to N1,450/$ as of the end of trading on Monday. On Friday, the naira closed at N1,420/$ on the parallel window.

 

A trader, Abdusallam Abubakar, told The PUNCH, “If you want to buy, I’ll sell to you at N1,450/$. That’s the price for today. We buy at N1440/$.”

 

Another operator, Magaji Mohammed, corroborated Abdusallam, “Dollar sells at N1450/$ today.”

 

The naira also took a beating in the cryptocurrency peer-to-peer market, trading for N1,429/$ on Binance’s P2P platform as of the time of filing this report. According to Chainalysis, a blockchain firm, Nigeria has one of the largest peer-to-peer exchange volumes in the world.

 

With this new rate, the exchange rate gap between the official and parallel markets has now narrowed to N101.37. The recent fall of the naira is despite the recent payment of $2.5bn by the apex bank to clear forex backlogs.