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Naira now wørst performing currency in the world — Report

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The nation’s currency, the naira, has taken a downturn, emerging as the world’s worst performing currency in the past month, a recent Bloomberg report says.

The reversal came after naira’s recent gains, emerging as the world’s worst-performing currency after a wonderful performance last month.

The report, which emerged on Friday, emphasised that the development has placed increased pressure on the Central Bank of Nigeria, CBN, to continue raising interest rates. The local currency depreciated to 1,466.31 against the dollar, marking its weakest level since March 20.

According to the report, the decline is attributed to the local scarcity of the US currency, with only $84 million available on Thursday, half of the previous day’s supply. Yemi Cardoso, CBN governor, had previously hailed the naira as the best-performing currency globally as of April 2024.

The naira faced challenges in March, plummeting to as low as N1,600/$1 on the official market and N1800/$1 on the parallel market. However, the CBN governor attributed the achievement to a series of foreign exchange market reforms and positive sentiment from leading international investment institutions.

The Chief Economist for Africa and the Middle East at Standard Chartered, Razia Khan, spoke with Bloomberg, estimating that $1.3 billion in naira futures will mature at the end of this month, potentially dampening market sentiment.
“The belief is that this will create more demand for dollars. When the currency appreciated very fast, there had been a bout of profit-taking by offshore investors, and this meant that the dollar-naira exchange rate backed up again.

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Naira depreciates against dollar across official, black markets after Easter holidays

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Nigeria’s currency, the naira, depreciated against the dollar at the official and parallel foreign exchange markets upon the resumption of work after Easter holidays.

The Central Bank of Nigeria’s data showed that it weakened to N1,602.63 per dollar on Tuesday from N1,599.93 exchanged on Thursday last week.

This means that it declined by N2.7 against the dollar on a day-to-day basis.

Similarly, the naira fell to N1620 per dollaron Tuesday from N1610 at the weekend.

The N1,620 dollar exchange rate at the black market is the same rate recorded on Thursday before the Easter holidays.

The development comes following the sustained slump in the dollar amid threats to US Federal Reserve independence and the tariff war.

 

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US: Tariffs on China will come down substantially – Trump announces

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President Donald Trump of the United States has said that high tariffs on goods from China will come down substantially.

He said the tariffs would crash but won’t go down to 0%.

The President stated this during a White House news conference on Tuesday.

Trump stated this in response to earlier comments same day by treasury secretary, Scott Bessent.

Bessent had made it clear that the high tariffs were unsustainable.

Recall that the US had placed import taxes of 145% on China and in response the Asian giants retaliated with 125% tariffs on US goods.

Trump had announced what he described as a reciprocal tariffs on nations across the globe, causing the stock market to stumble and interest rates to increase on US debt.

“We’re doing fine with China,” Trump said.

Despite his high tariffs, Trump said he would be “very nice” to China and not play hardball with Chinese President Xi Jinping.

He added, “We’re going to live together very happily and ideally work together.”

Trump said that the final tariff rate with China would come down “substantially” from the current 145%, saying “It won’t be that high, not going to be that high.”

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Nigeria’s electricity generation records steady drop – Report

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Nigeria’s electricity generation peak has recorded a steady drop to 4,742.20 megawatts in the past three days.

This is according to the National Grid performance report from Thursday, 17 to 19 April 2025.

The report showed that electricity generation dropped by 531 megawatts in the last three days.

Accordingly, the system performance data indicated that the electricity generation peak stood at 5,273.80 megawatts on Thursday but dropped to 5,131.20 megawatts and 4,742.80 megawatts on Friday and Saturday.

The development comes days after the Minister of Power, Adebayo Adelabu, announced that Nigeria hit its highest energy peak of 5,801.63 MW.

On Thursday, Adelabu reiterated that the government is doing everything to avert a collapse of the country’s power sector and plans to partly offset the N4 trillion owed to the electricity generation companies.

For more than a decade, Nigeria has continued to grapple with power sector challenges for a population of over 200 million.

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