April 12 (Lagos) - The Naira strengthened post Eid holidays as the various measures CBN put in place bear results. The websites that track the parallel market showed that US Dollar was going for 1140 in those markets.
That is a huge improvements from the 1900 levels that the currency touched less than one month ago. CBN must be commended for various difficult steps they have taken to arrive at the current rate.
These included sending EFCC to the BDC markets.
Arresting Binance crypto-currency platform employees that were involved in speculation on the crypto market with USDT.
Increasing benchmark lending rates.
Defending the Naira with Dollar sales and directing BDC's to sell within a band.
Restricting companies from using forex in foreign accounts as collateral to take Naira loans.
The CBN Governor came in to a lot of criticism on twitter (now known as X) and other social media sites when he made these decisions. He is now looking at those critics and laughing. CBN has managed to catch the Forex speculators and manipulators and they are now looking confused about what to do.
He was even called by the senate to explain why Naira had weakened, a situation we felt was an insult to the Governor because the politicians are themselves responsible for reckless spending of the nation's foreign reserves of luxuries and phantom projects.
If the Naira keeps appreciating, they are staring at expanding losses. For once the Naira investors are looking like they are winning. It has been almost a decade of losses for Naira investors and looks like the tide is finally turning for us Naira investors.
We hope the CBN moves will continue to gather momentum and Naira will assume its rightful value which is well below current levels in our opinion.
reporting for easykobo.com on Friday, April 12 2024 from Lagos, Nigeria