By Yakubu LAAH InvestAdvocate

Lagos (INVESTADVOCATE)-The naira on Thursday closed at 199/$1 according to the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN).

The local currency appreciated by 24 basis points against the dollar to trade at N198.52/$.

The CBN had on Wednesday announced the scrapping of its biweekly currency auctions and said it would sell dollars only at N198 revealing an actual devaluation of the currency.

The retail/wholesale Dutch Auction Systems, rDAS and wDAS are official trading windows for the sale of foreign exchange to end users.

According to the apex bank, the managed float exchange rate regime, which it had adopted following the liberalisation of the foreign exchange market, has for the most part been successful in ensuring exchange rate stability in line with its mandate.

The CBN says that due to decline in world oil prices and the resultant fall in the country’s foreign exchange earnings, the Bank has observed a widening margin between the rates in the interbank and the rDAS window, thus engendering undesirable practices including round-tripping, speculative demand, rent-seeking, spurious demand, and inefficient use of scarce foreign exchange resources by economic agents.