Naira Depreciates, Loses 0.64% to Dollar at Official Market

The naira on Wednesday further depreciated at the official market, trading at N1,308.52 to the dollar.

Data from the official trading platform of the FMDQ Exchange, a platform that oversees the Nigerian Autonomous Foreign Exchange Market (NAFEM), revealed that the Naira lost N8.37.

This represents a 0.64 per cent loss when compared to the previous trading date on Tuesday, April 23, when it exchanged at N1,300.15 to a dollar.

However, the total daily turnover further increased to 197.54 million dollars on Wednesday, up from 133.65 million dollars recorded on Tuesday.

Meanwhile, at the Investor’s and Exporter’s (I&E) window, the naira traded between N1,367 and N1,098 against the dollar.

The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) had sustained ongoing reforms that yielded steady appreciation of the naira until the local currency experienced a recent four-day decline.

Supporting the CBN’s efforts, the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) froze over 300 accounts linked to illicit forex trading to ensure the safety of the foreign exchange market.

EFCC Chairman, Ola Olukoyede, announced the freezing of the accounts on Tuesday during an interactive meeting with media executives in Abuja.

Olukoyede said the anti-graft agency discovered another scheme other than the crypto trading platform, Binance, and its system.

The EFCC boss noted that there were people within the system who were carrying out activities worse than Binance using P2P platforms.

He said the 300 illicit accounts would have led to a crash of the naira value to remove the steady gains within a week if the EFCC had not moved in.

Source: NAN