New Telegraph

Naira appreciates to 780/$ at parallel market over new notes

CBN frets over apathy to return old notes to banks’ vault …vows to enforce cashless policy

The naira appreciated at the parallel market yesterday hours after President Muhammadu Buhari and the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) unveiled the new naira notes. In a chat with New Telegraph, a currency dealer in the Ogba area of Lagos State said that the exchange rate between both currencies fell to N780/$1 on Wednesday evening.

Findings by New Telegraph revealed that the rate to exchange the United States dollar was N785 on Tuesday evening, indicating the naira appreciated by 0.6 per cent, representing a N5 drop in value of the dollar. The dealer noted that the depreciation in dollar value coincided with the unveiling of the new naira notes, which carried new colours but maintained the images, designs, and inscriptions on old notes.

It had been reported that the decision of the central bank to redesign the naira would lead to too much naira chasing the small amount of dollars in the black market wheresomepeople, whocan’t stand the rigours associated with official exchange rate often get the greenback. Recall that a former Deputy Governor of CBN, Kingsley Moghalu, had stated that “people who are holding huge amounts of cash outside the banking system for nefarious reasons will go the parallel forex market to buy hard currency, putting further downward pressure on the value of the naira as too much naira would be chasing too few dollars.” However, since CBN revealed its plan to change the naira, the Nigerian currency has been fluctuating in the black market for a number of reasons.

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