BY Bunmi Aduloju
The naira depreciated further to N1,482.57 against the dollar at the official window, also known as the Nigerian Autonomous Foreign Exchange Market (NAFEM), on Tuesday.
The official window rate, for the second time in nine years, surpassed the value of the parallel market quoted at N1,470 at the close of the market on Tuesday, according to a Bureau de Change (BDC) trader in Lagos.
At the close of trading, the naira extended its decline by 9.93 percent from the N1,348.63/$ reported on Monday.
The dollar traded as high as N1,531 and as low as N789 before closing at N1,482.57.
The Tuesday closing rate comes hours after the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) said it has concluded the payment of all verified foreign exchange (FX) claims by airlines with an additional $64.44 million disbursed to the concerned international aviation firms.
This followed the disbursement of $61.64 million to foreign airlines through various commercial banks as revealed by the financial regulator on January 7, 2024.
Hakama Sidi-Ali, CBN’s acting director of corporate communications, said the latest amount paid to the airlines brought the total verified sum disbursed to the sector to $136.73 million, stressing that all the verified airline claims have now been cleared.
She said Olayemi Cardoso, the CBN governor, and his team are committed and would stop at nothing to ensure that the verified backlog of payments across all other sectors is cleared and confidence restored in the Nigerian FX market.
On January 29, 2024, the bank released $500 million to various sectors to address the backlog of FX transactions.
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