FOREX: Turnover In I&E Window Drops By 82% To $3.7bn

The volume of dollars traded (turnover) in the Investors and Exporters (I&E) window of the foreign exchange (FOREX) market fell year-on-year (YoY) to $3.7 billion in the first quarter of this year (Q1’21) from $20.49 billion in Q1’2020.

However, while the YoY trend shows a huge decline, the Month-on-Month, MoM, trend in the first quarter of this year is showing a steady rise.

Financial analysis of transactions in the window as published by FMDQ showed that on a monthly basis, the turnover stood at $906.44 million in January 2021 from where it rose by 43 percent to $1.3 billion in February.

The upward trend continued in March rising by 15 percent to $1.5 billion. On weekly details the transaction volume shows a consistent fluctuation over the quarter. In March the window traded $267.62 million in the first week, and the turnover rose by 63 percent to $435.5 million in the second week but down by 24 percent to $329.74 million in the third week.

However, turnover increased in the fourth week by three percent to $338.03 million and stood at $122.14 million in the last three days of March.

Meanwhile, naira appreciated by 53 kobo in the I&E trading window in March as the indicative exchange rate for the window dropped to N408.67 kobo per dollar on March 31st from N409.20 kobo per dollar on 1st of March.