By Adedapo Adesanya
The Naira on Friday recorded one of its best performances across the board, including in the Nigerian Autonomous Foreign Exchange Market (NAFEM), on optimism spurred by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) clearing matured forward FX contracts with a number of banks as part of a key step targeted by the government to stabilise the local currency.
In the official market, the value of the local currency rose against the US Dollar on Friday by 2.2 per cent or N17.14 to N776.14/$1 from the previous day’s N793.28/$1.
The FX turnover for the last trading day of the week at the spot market stood at $98.82 million, lower than the $136.11 million achieved a day earlier by 27.4 per cent or $37.29 million.
On Thursday, news broke that the apex bank had begun to clear some of its foreign exchange backlogs.
A source in the know of the matter confirmed to this newspaper that the apex bank had settled some of its FX obligations with Citibank, Stanbic IBTC, and Standard Chartered.
This information strengthened the Nigerian currency in the Peer-to-Peer (P2P) market yesterday, as it firmed up by 8.4 per cent to N892/$1 compared with the previous day’s N974/$1. At intra-day, it was sold at N838/$1.
In the black market, the Naira appreciated against the American currency by N160 to close at N940/$1 compared with the previous day’s value of N1,140/$1.
Also, in the official market, the domestic currency improved its rate against the Pound Sterling by N16.99 to settle at N966.43/£1 versus Thursday’s rate of N983.42/£1 and against the Euro, it gained N19.06 to finish at N839.39/€1 versus N858.45/€1.
The cryptocurrency market ended in the green territory on Friday, with Ethereum (ETH) growing by 1.5 per cent to $1,829.62 and Cardano (ADA) gaining 1.2 per cent to trade at $0.3259.
Further, Ripple (XRP) recorded a 1.0 per cent appreciation to finish at $0.6134, Litecoin (LTC) expanded by 0.2 per cent to $69.38, and Dogecoin (DOGE) increased by 0.1 per cent to $0.068.
On the flip side, Solana (SOL) plunged by 2.0 per cent to sell at $39.51, Bitcoin (BTC) slid by 0.8 per cent to $34,633.55, Binance Coin (BNB) declined by 0.6 per cent to $230.25, while the US Dollar Tether (USDT) and Binance USD (BUSD) traded flat at $1.00 each.