The exchange rate for cargo clearance has dropped below official and parallel market rates to N1,164.84/$, according to the latest update on the Nigeria Customs Service’s (NCS) exchange rate portal.
Nairametrics had reported a hike of 11% in the exchange rate for Customs’ import duties to N1,277.52/$ two days ago, following naira depreciation over the week.
The current Customs exchange rate of N1,164.8/$ is below the reported rates on both official and parallel markets. On Saturday, the naira closed at N1280 to the dollar on the unofficial window- representing a gain of 8.7% compared to the figure for Friday which was N1400 to the greenback.
However, on the official window, the naira closed at N1,339.23/$ on Friday indicating a depreciation from the value reported the previous day.
In the past one week, the naira has depreciated significantly on both official and parallel markets after significant gains recorded between March and April in which the currency was described as the best performing in the world.
However, the purple patch seems to have fizzled out in the past one week as the naira reportedly lost about a third of its value during the period. This is despite the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN)’s intervention by way of selling $10,000 to Bureau de Change operators at just over N1,000 to the dollar– below the official market rate and pegging the sell spread at just 1.5% of the buy price.
Since the beginning of the year, the CBN has made exchange rate stability a priority and its policies have been geared towards achieving that. The apex bank has in the last four months clamped down on online and offline speculators, introduced cash pooling for international oil companies (IOCs), hiked monetary policy rate (MPR) by 600 basis points, selling T-bills at over 20% and so on.
Although the apex bank has recorded significant success in taming the depreciation, stability has eluded the Nigerian foreign exchange market hence the frequent update on the Customs FX rate.