Naira slips to 364/$1 at parallel market
.As I&E FX window daily turnover drops to $59.7m
The Nigerian currency, Naira, suffered a slight blow at the end of Thursday trading activities to close at 364 to the Dollar against 363 recorded on Wednesday, at the parallel market of the official foreign exchange market.
Also, the Investors & Exporters FX window daily transactions was put at $59.66 compared to $301.2 million sold ton Wednesday, $96.77m exchanged on Tuesday and weaker than $209.05m sold on the first trading day of the week.
This was after I&E FX window, began yesterday trading at a depreciated rate of 360.06 to the dollar, lower than 359.75 the previous day, which represented 0.9 per cent drop. Before closing at an unchanged price of 360.41, even though, it was lower than 360.37 exchanged the previous
The local currency at the parallel market, which dropped a point on Thursday against the pound, was seen at a relapsed rate o 483to the Pound sterling after selling at 482 the previous day but steadied at 426 per Euro at the unofficial forex market.
Also, the official forex market maintained 306.30 to the dollar rate, which was the same rate sold on Wednesday and Tuesday.
Forex dealers, however, believed that lack of not rolling over the N340 billion worth of treasury bills on Thursday responsible the lowered yields and prompted foreign buyers to exit.
Thay were of the belief that the sell-off has led to a bottleneck in the forex market with thin inflows as foreigners bid to buy dollars.
The Federal government has plans to issue a N10.69bn a ($29 million), debut green bond next week, the first tranche of a N150bn programme, the environment ministry said on Thursday.
The debt programme will be used to fund projects to reduce carbon emissions and develop renewable energy. The ministry did not give details of the length of the programme.
Meanwhile, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has said that many investors want to come to Nigeria but how to retrieve their investments remains their major concern.
The Senior Financial Sector Expert, Debt and Capital Market Instruments Division, Monetary and Capital Markets Department, International Monetary Fund (IMF), Miriam Tamene, said this during a visit by fund’s team to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in Abuja at the mid week.
According to her, “At the Annual meetings of IMF, we were pleasantly surprised when we saw many investors interested in the securities market in Nigeria.
“A lot of people think that Nigeria is still an investors’ destination, the main concerns most of them had was the fear that they might not be able to take out their money anytime they want to hence they are being very watchful.”
“Investors are interested in Nigeria, but with difficulties they had in getting their money out recently, that confidence is not there yet. It has improved though, but they are still watching. It is still so much fragile and not what they can take for granted just yet,” she added.
She called on the monetary and regulatory authorities in Nigeria to roll out policies that would bring down the inflation rate in the country as well as increase access to domestic funds to ensure that the economy attains further growth in 2018.
Stories by Motolani Oseni
