Naira reaches historic lowest level: N300 to $1

Naira reaches historic lowest level: N300 to $1

Wednesday, January 13, 2016 8:42 pm


US dollar chase killing Nigeria's currency

US dollar chase killing Nigeria’s currency

The naira continued its slide against the dollar at the parallel market on Wednesday trading between N295  and N300 to the dollar.

It was traded N290 to the dollar at the same market  in Lagos on Tuesday.

The naira exchange rate was, however, stable at N197 to the dollar at the official market on Wednesday.

The naira has depreciated steadily since Monday when the apex bank stopped the weekly sale of foreign exchange to Bureau de Change operators in the bid to sanitise the market.

Traders at the market said that they were concerned about the depreciating naira exchange rate in the black market.

They, however, expressed optimism that the policy might impact positively on the market in the long run.

Mr Godwin Emefiele, the CBN Governor, announced the new foreign exchange policy at a media briefing in Abuja on Monday.

He said that the new policy was to stop “rent seeking activities’’ in the market. According to Emefiele, the market only satisfies five per cent of Nigeria’s forex demand.

Nigerian stocks also fell 3.6 percent to near a three-and-half-year low on Wednesday.

The stock index, which has the second-biggest weighting after Kuwait on the MSCI frontier market index, fell to 25,206 points, dropping to levels last reached in September 2012.

The index is down 9.1 percent in its eight days of trading this year, after shedding 17.4 percent last year.

 


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