The new interbank market opened on Monday morning with authorised dealers quoting the local currency at N253 against the U.S. dollar.
However, as at the time of filling this report, dealers said no trades were yet to be agreed.
The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) had in the guideline for the market-driven foreign exchange (forex) regime said that Authorised Dealers shall buy and sell forex among themselves on a two-way quote basis through the Financial Market Dealers Quote (FMDQ) Thomson Reuters forex Trading Systems (TRFXTConversational Dealing), or any other system approved by the apex bank.
Although some participants in the market believe that as trading continues for the day, the Naira might drop to N257 from the earlier official/interbant rate of N197/N199 , against the greenback,
Though some industry watchers see the opening rate as good for the Naira, especially when compared with early last week’s paralel market rate of N370 to the dollar, other observers believe the opening rate is a sharp depreciation when compared, with the official N197 per dollar peg before today .
The central bank said last week it would scrap its fixed exchange system which has seen the currency pegged at N197 to the U.S. dollar for the past 16 months.
Participants in the inter-bank forex market include Authorised Dealers, Authorised Buyers, Oil Companies, Oil Service Companies, Exporters, End-users and any other entity the CBN may designate from time to time.
The bank last week said it would engineer a devaluation of the Naira, adopting a “purely market-driven” system from June 20 as Nigeria tries to withstand a rout in global prices.
But despite today’s quote, rating agency Moody’s gave a credit positive thumbs up to the shift, saying that although the central bank “is likely to continue to intervene,” the new system will “gradually eliminate any gap between unofficial exchange rates” and help boost o