SAN FRANCISCO, January 13, (THEWILL) – The naira on Wednesday depreciated in value against other currencies across segments of foreign exchange (FX) market after the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) stopped FX supply to Bureau De Change (BDC) operators.
Consequently, the naira lost N14 or 4.84 percent against the dollar at the parallel market. It also lost N10 or 3.48 percent against the greenback at the BDC segment of the FX market.
After trading on Wednesday, the local currency closed at N297/$ compared with N287/$ traded the previous day at the BDC segment. It closed at N303/$ as against N289/$ the previous day at the parallel market.
At the inter-bank FX market, it weakened slightly against the dollar by N0.09k or 0.05 percent as it closed at N199.45k/$ on Wednesday from N199.36k/$, data from FMDQ revealed.
However, the CBN's clearing rate remained unchanged, closing at N197.00k/$ at the inter-bank FX as seen on FMDQ website.
Against other currencies, the local currency closed at N405 against the pounds sterling and N313 euro. The unofficial market accounts for less than 5 percent of total dollar trades in Nigeria.
Andrew Elueni, managing director/CEO, Flawless Capital Limited, said there was no business for BDCs as they cannot get one to sell.
He said the only option left for BDCs was to look for FX at autonomous market, which he said was very low in Nigeria.
The CBN had discontinued its sales of FX to BDCs adding that operators in this segment of the market would now need to source their FX from autonomous source. The CBN noted that it would deploy more resources to monitoring these sources to ensure that no operator was in violation of its anti-money laundering laws.
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