The local currency had appreciated to
around 450 after security agents carried out series of raids on Bureau
De Change operators, who sold the greenback above the N400 stipulated by
the Central Bank of Nigeria.
Security agents have been raiding the
offices of the BDC operators, ordering them to sell dollar at a lower
rate in a bid to break the fall of the local currency.
However, the naira started recording losses gradually again as scarcity of the greenback weighed on the forex markets.
“The clampdown on the black market
operators by security agents has negatively impacted dollar supply to
the market,” one Bureau de changer operator told Reuters.
Economic and currency experts have said
getting security agents after the BDC operators cannot get the ailing
naira to stabilise.
At the official market, the naira closed at 305 against the dollar, the level it has closed since August.
The naira is expected to depreciate
slightly further in coming weeks at both the official and parallel
markets on the back of gradual increase demand for forex by small
businesses stocking for the Christmas and New Year sales.
Meanwhile, on the teeming streets of Lagos, the once omnipresent money-changers are going underground.
They’ve become the latest target of security agents in a desperate move by the Federal Government to bolster the naira.
That is creating a parallel market within the black market, according to analysts at Lagos-based Afrinvest West Africa Limited.
One trader in the Lagos suburb of
Surulere, who asked not to be identified as he feared arrest, said he
would continue using the old rate with trusted customers and refused to
sell dollars to others.
“The black market will go further underground,” an analyst at Afrinvest, Omotola Abimbola, said.
“The fact that they went as low as getting security forces on the streets shows a new level of desperation,” he added.
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