Lagos - Nigeria's naira was quoted as low as 499 to the dollar on the black market on Tuesday, 39 percent weaker than on the official market, where the central bank has
been selling the greenback to support the local currency.
On the official market, the naira was quoted at 305.25 on
Tuesday, the level it has been trading at since last August.
Traders said the dollar was fetching between 495 and 499
naira on the black market. It was quoted at 497 on the black
market two weeks ago.
The approved bureau de change operators set their first ever
reference exchange rate for the naira this month and have
maintained the same quote for the currency at 399 per dollar for
the past three weeks.
Foreign exchange bureaus said international money transfer
agents were selling $8,000 to each of their 3,000 members weekly
to support liquidity, which is far short of market demand.
The government has been pressing retail operators to narrow
what it says is a damaging gulf between the naira's official
rate and the unapproved open retail market - black
market.
The naira lost a third of its official value against the
greenback in 2016 after the central bank scrapped a currency peg
in a bid to alleviate dollar shortages.
Retail currency operators account for less than 5 percent of
total foreign currency trading in Nigeria. But with liquidity
poor on the official market due to low oil revenues and the
central bank left as the main dollar supplier, the bureau de
changes have done more business.