Naira appreciates 0.3% to N588/$1 at parallel market

Nigerian naira, on Thursday morning, appreciated against the dollar at the parallel section of the foreign exchange market.

Bureaux De Change (BDC) operators, popularly known as “abokis’, who spoke to TheCable in Lagos, said the local currency gained N2 or 0.3 per cent to N588 at the street market.

Last week, naira closed at N590 to a dollar at the black market.

The traders put the buying price of the dollar at N583 and the selling price at N588, leaving a N5 profit margin.

They attributed the appreciation in the value of the naira to low demand for the greenback (dollar) by importers.

Since the suspension of trading information by abokiFX — citizens have resorted to street traders for the current parallel market rates of the local currency.

A parallel market (street market) is characterised by noncompliant behaviour with an institutional set of rules.

But the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) has consistently maintained that the parallel market represents less than one per cent of foreign exchange (FX) transactions and should never be used to determine Nigeria’s naira/dollar exchange.

On the official market side, the local currency depreciated by 0.32 per cent to close at N418.33 on Wednesday, according to details on FMDQ OTC Securities Exchange — a platform that oversees official foreign-exchange trading in Nigeria.