Naira Plummets to All-Time Low Against Dollar Despite CBN’s Intervention

The Nigerian currency, the Naira, suffered a massive loss on Monday, hitting a historic low of N1,348.63 per US Dollar in the official foreign exchange market. This was a sharp drop of 33.87 per cent or N456.73 from N891.90 per Dollar on Friday, according to data from FMDQ.

The Naira had already breached the N1,000 per Dollar mark twice in December last year, when it traded at N1,099.05 and N1,043.09 per Dollar respectively. The Naira also performed poorly in the parallel market, where it depreciated by 2.76 per cent to close at N1,450 per Dollar on Monday.

The Naira’s depreciation occurred despite the increase in forex turnover at the end of the trading session, which rose by 36.33 per cent to $64.29 million. It also came in spite of the Central Bank of Nigeria’s (CBN) efforts to boost liquidity in the forex market and clear the backlog of forex demand.

Daily24 Apps reports that the CBN had released another N500 million to the forex market last week to meet the verified forex requests of customers. This was after the bank had injected about $2 billion to the market a week earlier to settle the outstanding obligations of various sectors, including manufacturing, aviation, and petroleum.