The naira, on Monday, August 29, fell to N413 to the dollar at the parallel market down from the N412 to the dollar on Friday, August 26.
The Nigerian currency had continued its free fall at the parallel market to N412 per dollar, while it remained at N410 per dollar in some other parts of Lagos.
Also, in spite of the intervention by the banking sector regulator, the spot rate of the naira fell to N318.83 to the dollar on the interbank forex market yesterday, down from the N314.95 last Friday.
The Central Bank of Nigeria, CBN, had ditched its 16-month-old peg on the naira in June and introduced a flexible exchange rate regime to allow the currency to trade freely on the interbank market. However, dollar liquidity has remained a concern in the system with periodic interventions by the central bank.
The situation was worsened by the suspension of eight banks from the FX market last week due to their failure to return the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC)/Nigerian Liquefied Natural Gas (NLNG) Company dollar deposits to the Treasury Single Account (TSA) domiciled with the CBN.
