By Adedapo Adesanya
The Naira depreciated against the US Dollar by 1.6 per cent or N23.07 in the Nigerian Autonomous Foreign Exchange Market (NAFEX) on Thursday, May 23.
It was observed that the foreign exchange (FX) volatility weakened the value of the Nigerian currency to N1,485.66/$1 at the market window compared with the N1,462.59/$1 it traded in the preceding session.
In the same vein, the local currency depreciated against the Pound Sterling at the spot market during the session by N31.61 to settle at N1,870.76/£1 versus midweek’s closing price of N1,839.15/£1 and shed N20.59 against the Euro to sell for N1,591.36/€1, in contrast to the previous day’s value of N1,570.77/€1.
This happened despite an improvement in the supply of forex into the market, with the turnover rising by $44.10 million or 35.7 per cent to $167.55 million from the midweek session’s $123.45 million.
The CBN Governor, Mr Yemi Cardoso, speaking on behalf of the committee during the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) meeting on Tuesday, stated that such volatility faced in the Nigerian foreign exchange market is observable in any functioning market globally.
According to Mr Cardoso, the CBN is committed to maintaining a transparent FX market through a willing-buyer, willing-seller model, noting that the depreciation is merely a reflection of the interplay between demand and supply.
In the parallel market, the Naira lost N5 against the greenback yesterday to trade at N1,505/$1 compared with the N1,500/$1 it was exchanged a day earlier.
Meanwhile, in the cryptocurrency market, despite a bearish market the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) announced on Thursday that it has approved eight applications for spot Ethereum exchange traded funds (ETFs), effectively green-lighting Ethereum trading on Wall Street. This spurred the coin to go up by 1.3 per cent to $3,803.54.
But Dogecoin (DOGE) fell by 4.8 per cent to sell at $0.1591, Cardano (ADA) declined by 4.0 per cent to $0.4634, Binance Coin (BNB) went south by 3.0 per cent to $596.16, Bitcoin (BTC) dropped 2.4 per cent to close at $67,612.22, Solana (SOL) depreciated by 1.3 per cent to $176.48, Litecoin (LTC) slumped by 1.2 per cent to $84.77, and Ripple (XRP) waned by 0.6 per cent to $0.5241, while the US Dollar Tether (USDT) and US Dollar Coin (USDC) sold flat at $1.00.