The naira gained slightly against the US dollar at the investor and exporter window on Wednesday, a day after it fell amid a shortage of new naira notes in the country.
Data published on the FMDQ website, where the currency is officially traded, showed that the local currency closed at ₦461.50 per $1 on Wednesday, which translated into an appreciation of 0.04% to N461.67 per dollar that was traded in the previous session on Tuesday.
This became significant as the intra-trade period foreign exchange supply soared 30.1 percent ($89.54 million) from $68.85 million on Tuesday.
The national currency hit an intraday low of N462.02 and rose to a high of N446.00 per $1 before settling at N461.50 on Wednesday, the third business day of the week.
The official window of the market opened at N461.25 and closed at N461.50.
However, the parallel market exchange rate depreciated as the shortage of new banknotes hit harder.
Currency traders in Abuja said the dollar was trading at N765.00 to the dollar on Wednesday in the parallel market. This represents a depreciation of N10.00 or 1.53 per cent of N755.00 per $1 that was exchanged on Tuesday.
Currency traders said on Wednesday that the value of the naira against the dollar fell further due to a shortage of new banknotes in the country.
“Because we don’t have naira, we are mainly exchanging dollars for dollars now,” a forex trader in Abuja’s Zone 4 told PREMIUM TIMES, declining to be named.
Meanwhile, the Supreme Court on Wednesday stayed a lawsuit filed by some state governments challenging the February 10 deadline set by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) for the phasing out of old naira banknotes.