Naira gains as market opens for official trading
The Nigerian currency, Naira, on Tuesday, gained further to close at 364 to the dollar against an appreciable rate of 365 retained on Monday at the parallel market.
The naira, as at close of yesterday, traded at 485 to the pound sterling against 492 traded a week ago, and 425 compared to 436 sold the same period at the parallel market.
At the official foreign exchange market, the local currency was seen at 305.75 to the dollar against 305.80 traded last Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, before appreciated to the current rate on Friday.
The local currency at the Nigerian Autonomous Foreign Exchange (NAFEX), commenced first trading day of the week at an opening rate of 359.76 against 359.89 last Tuesday, while closing at 360.40 compared to 360.31 traded at the same period.
The autonomous forex window, however, recorded an appreciable daily turnover of $340.07 million against to $299.94 million declared in the corresponding period a week ago.
In the just concluded week alone, the autonomous forex window declared a whopping $1.492 billion turnover, with Monday closing figure of $340.07m, dropped a bit the following day to $299.94m, Wednesday $238.98m, Thursday 238.98m before recording $363.63m on Friday, which represented the highest turnover during the week.
In the previous week, The Daily Times findings showed that the Importer $ Exporter FX widow recorded a turnover of $909.59m, totaling $2.402 billion transactions in two weeks.
Therefore, financial experts and forex dealers believed that the newly introduced NAFEX widow has reversed the zero level confidence of investors to highest level of confidence in the Nigerian economy.
However, the breakdown of the daily turnover showed that the window on Monday recorded a whopping 363.63m turnover in just one day transaction against 131.84m traded the previous Monday, but declared a weaker figure of $238.98m on Tuesday.
It however, moved up on Wednesday to $250.29m, even though it opened mid week trading at 359.72 stronger than 359.89 to the dollar on Tuesday, and also stronger at 360.05 compared to 360.31 a day before and Monday’s 360.39.
On Thursday, the NAFEX window declared a total daily turnover of $299.94m stronger than $250.29 m sold on Wednesday, and opened for trading at 359.66 per dollar against Wednesday’s 359.72. It then, closed at 360.00 compared to 360.05 traded the previous day.
But activities in the I&E FX window on Friday, strengthened when it closed the official trading at 360.40, which had earlier opened for trading at 359.45 per dollar to close the last trading day before market closed for the independent holiday with a daily total transactions of $340.07m.
The daily Times checks, however, revealed that the autonomous window in the week before had opened with on a positive of $131.84m turnover on Monday, but surprisingly dropped to $125m on Tuesday, declaring traded volume of $256.84m in just two days.
Our further checks, also, showed that the Nigerian local currency, had recorded 0.04 per cent gain at the autonomous forex window, after opening trading activities a week ago at 359.66 per dollar, and 359.9 on Tuesday, respectively, but closed at 360.36, 359.06 last Monday and Tuesday.
However, as at last Wednesday, the turnover at the NAFEX had increased to $359.59m with addition of the mid week daily traded volume of $102.59, even though it was opened for trading at N359.71 to the dollar but closed at 360.22 per the Greenback.
Stories by Motolani Oseni
