The Naira, on Thursday, August 4, hit another record low trading at N400 to a dollar at the Bureau de Change segment of the foreign exchange market.
The naira dropped N10 yesterday to close at N400 to the dollar, compared to rate of N390 to the dollar on Wednesday,August 3.
This week, the local currency depreciated against the greenback by about 8.2 percent, from the N370 a dollar at the end of last week.
Currency traders attributed the crash to the severe scarcity of foreign currency in the street market in the wake of daily increase in demand.
A trader in Lagos, Abubakar Sadiq, said that at about 13:00 hours, a dollar traded at N400 in Lagos and Abuja, but dropped to N395 in the evening.
He said: “Unless the CBN officially inject liquidity to the BDC market, we can’t sustain the demand.”
At the interbank market, the local currency hovered around 310 and 315 a dollar since the beginning of the week due to the increases in supply and of the FX.
On Thursday, it also fell on the interbank market closing at N315.06 to the dollar, lower than N311.03 to the dollar from the previous day.
The President, Association of Bureau de Change Operators of Nigeria, ABCON, Alhaji Aminu Gwadabe, who commented on the naira pressure on the parallel market yesterday, expressed optimism that the naira would rebound once banks that are agents to approved international money transfer operators start to sell foreign currencies accruing from remittances to licensed BDCs.
