Since the start of August, the naira has continued to rise while holding onto its gains amid weak buying pressures of the greenback in Nigeria’s black market.
A few days after security personnel stormed a Bureaux De Change (BDC) hub in Abuja, the naira continued to strengthen on the black-market Wednesday, strengthening to N660 per dollar.
Although there are local and global viewpoints on the pressure on the naira, the demand for foreign exchange for goods and services has remained constant, posing a demanding challenge.
In addition to damaging investor confidence and reducing forex inflows into Nigeria, the country’s deteriorating security situation also damaged the economy by driving up the price of gasoline subsidies and increasing oil theft.
Recall that at the parallel market last week, the naira traded at N720 to the dollar. This also demonstrated the naira’s increase of N51 to the dollar in a matter of days.
Since Monday, August 1, the Naira has strengthened against the US Dollar significantly more easily in all facets of the foreign exchange (FX) market. There has been a relative relief for the Naira against the US Dollar across all segments of the foreign currency (FX) market after it faced challenges in July due to demand for the dollar which was spiked by panic buying over devaluation concerns.
The Nigerian currency strengthened on the official market by 0.03% to settle at N428.88 to the dollar on Monday, according to data on FMDQ OTC.