The Nigeria naira on the 28th July, Traded at N472 to a dollar at the parallel market as foreign exchange scarcity persevere.
In the parallel market in June The exchange rate was N440/$, However, Operators have insisted for the immediate fusion of the multiple exchange rates in the country.
Eben Joels, who is The Senior Partner, Regulatory and Technology, Stransact Partners, said the more perturbing issue was that the gap between the various exchange rates operating in Nigeria created arbitrage opportunities for highly connected individuals.
He stated that he was more concerned that some people did not need to work to make billions of naira because they could simply obtain foreign currency at the official rate and sell on the black market.
Joels said, “Some people are cleaning out of this situation. The spread between the black market and the official market is back to about N100 on a dollar.
“It is not that rate that is the issue right now. We need to move to a single unified exchange rate. For all you know, the naira may be underpriced artificially because of the quest to defend the naira.
“Using purchasing power parity, I believe the naira is underpriced and the so-called need to defend the naira by operating several tiers of official exchange rate is part of the systematic theft of national resources going on as we speak.”
On May 2020, Nigeria’s Apex Bank (CBN) had earlier reported that Business organisations in the country had predicted the fall of Naira in the next few months, this was noted in its CBN expectation business report.
The CBN report stated:
“Respondent firms expect the naira to depreciate in the current month, next month, next two months and appreciate in the next six months,”
(C) Control TV 2020.
