Nigeria’s naira firmed up on the American dollar for the second consecutive day as Nigerians continue to groan over the prices of goods.
According to Reuters, the naira rose on Tuesday by 3 percent to equal 364 against the 375 which it was on the unofficial market on Monday.
President Muhammadu Buhari had continually insisted that he would not accept naira devaluation as the currency had been worst hit by a fall in oil prices.
Officially, the naira is still unchanged at 197/dollar as one dealer who preferred anonymity stated: “Many people are now aligning with the government’s position of no devaluation.”
Aminu Gwadabe, the head of Nigeria's bureaux de change association, said that retail currency operators were working to introduce a single quote across the parallel market and maintain a bid-ask spread of 3.5 percent for trades.
"We have set up a unit to monitor compliance with the new measures," he told Reuters, adding that the central bank has been informed of the measures.
President Muhammadu Buhari on Saturday again rejected the idea of devaluing the West African nation's currency, despite a hammering of the naira on the secondary market last week.
Gwadabe said the market was trying to adjust to the reality of no currency devaluation by the government.
The central bank has resisted the depreciation by imposing hard currency curbs. It banned dollar sales to retail currency outlets last month, sending the naira to record lows on the parallel market, and later stopped daily sales to the interbank market, in an effort to conserve reserves, now at their lowest in more than 11 years.
Source: Reuters, News Punch
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