By Adedapo Adesanya
The new foreign exchange (FX) trading system of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) known as the Electronic Foreign Exchange Matching System (EFEMS) has continued to strengthen the Naira in the various segments of the currency market.
On Friday, the local currency maintained its positive run with a 2.0 per cent or N32 gain against the Dollar in the Nigerian Autonomous Foreign Exchange Market (NAFEM) to trade at N1,535/$1 compared with the preceding day’s value of N1,567/$1.
This happened despite a decline in the value of forex transactions at the official market yesterday by 38.8 per cent or $111.18 million to $175.15 million from the $286.33 million recorded a day earlier.
The EFEMS was put in place by the central bank to eliminate distortions and bring greater efficiency to Nigeria’s volatile foreign exchange market.
It was observed that in the spot market, the domestic currency appreciated against the British Pound Sterling during the session by N84.25 to quote at N1,960.61/£1 compared with the previous day’s N2,044.86/£1 and improved its value against the Euro by N66.90 to close at N1,624.41/€1 versus Thursday’s closing price of N1,691.31/€1.
In the parallel market, the Nigerian Naira gained N125 against the US Dollar on Friday to settle at N1,580/$1, in contrast to the preceding session’s N1,705/$1.
Meanwhile, the cryptocurrency market was largely positive with the second-largest cryptocurrency, Ethereum (ETH), crossing the $4,000 mark for the first time since March before it corrected.
The coin chalked up 2.0 per cent in the last 24 hours to trade at $3,978.16 as spot ether exchange-traded funds saw record inflows, suggesting high institutional interest.
Further, Ripple (XRP) increased yesterday by 3.9 per cent to $2.44, Binance Coin (BNB) went up by 1.9 per cent to $741.66, Bitcoin (BTC) grew by 1.5 per cent to $99,420.58, Cardano (ADA) jumped by 1.1 per cent to $1.21, Dogecoin expanded by 0.7 per cent to $0.4397, and Litecoin (LTC) inflated by 0.4 per cent to $136.67.
However, Solana (SOL) slumped by 1.3 per cent to trade at $235.85, while the US Dollar Tether (USDT) and the US Dollar Coin (USDC) remained unchanged at $1.00 each.