The naira fell to a four-month low on Tuesday, trading at N1621.12 per dollar at the official window, compared to N1611.40 per dollar on Monday. This marked a 0.60 percent depreciation from the previous day’s close.
This decline occurred despite recent interventions by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), which sold dollars to authorized dealers and eligible Bureau De Change operators, indicating that foreign exchange demand continues to outweigh supply.
“In the interim, we expect the naira to remain weak, driven by tight market liquidity due to the CBN’s limited capacity to significantly intervene in the FX market,” Cordros Capital Limited stated in a recent update.
CBN Governor Olayemi Cardoso emphasized that the central bank was not focused on defending the naira but on allowing market forces to determine its value, with the CBN stepping in only to provide liquidity in specific market segments.
At the close of Monday’s trading, the naira had fallen to N1611.40 per dollar on the Nigerian Autonomous Foreign Exchange Market, hosted on the FMDQ Securities Exchange. This represented a 0.13 percent decline compared to the close of N1609 per dollar on Friday.
The daily turnover stood at $179.34 million on Monday, up from $168.3 million on Friday, with an intraday high of N1622 per dollar and an intraday low of N1500 per dollar.
In the black market on Tuesday, the naira traded as high as N1630 per dollar.
A ship equipment merchant in the Apapa area of Lagos, speaking off the record with The PUNCH, revealed that he had agreed to sell equipment at a rate of N1550 per dollar on Monday evening, only to wake up to higher rates on Tuesday.
