By InvestAdvocate

Lagos (INVESTADVOCATE)-The naira was quoted at 242 to the dollar on the parallel (black) market on Wednesday, down 0.8 percent from 240 the previous day after the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) cut interest rates, Reuters report quoted a trader.

The report said the local currency which is pegged at a rate of 197 to the greenback on the official interbank market, traded at 235 on the black market on Monday.

The CBN on Tuesday cut the benchmark interest rate from 13 percent to 11 percent at the end of monetary policy committee meeting (MPC) held November 23 and November 24, 2015.

Also, the MPC cut the cash reserve ratio (CRR) to 20 percent from 25 percent, Nigeria’s central bank a year ago increased monetary policy rate (MPR) from 12 percent to 13 percent; increasing it to 100 basis points and had since then retained it.

The MPC changed the symmetric corridor around the MPR from +/-200bps to +200bps and -700bps.