BY Mayowa Tijani
With the persistence of dollar scarcity, the Nigerian local currency crashed by 2.17 percent against the dollar at the parallel market on Monday.
The naira traded at 235 to the dollar at the parallel market compared as against N230 to a dollar on Friday.
The naira hits another low after the Central Bank cut dollar supply to bureaux de change (BDC) operators based on it struggles to conserve foreign exchange reserves.
“The central bank has reduced the amount of dollar sold to bureaux de change at its twice-weekly intervention, which has also been cut to once a week now,” Harrison Owoh, a bureau de change operator, told Reuters.
Owoh said the reduction in volume of dollar sales by the Central Bank coupled with year-end surged in demand for foreign currencies by importers have impacted negatively on the local currency.
The price of the naira to the greenback however remained unchanged at 197 to the dollar on the official interbank market.
The Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) of the apex bank is expected to meet this week to decide the way forward for the nation’s monetary policy.
The CBN has been selling over $80m to BDC operators at interbank rates to ensure the parallel market pricing of the naira is close to the official rate.
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