The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) has again increased the exchange rate for calculating import duty at the nation’s seaport by 3.1 percent following the further depreciation of the naira against the United States dollar.
The exchange rate was increased to N1,502.136/$ from N1,457.014/$ on Wednesday, May 15, according to data obtained from the Nigeria Customs Service (NCS) online trade portal.
The increase in Customs FX duty rate represents about a 3.1 percent increase in the rate of each dollar required to clear goods from the port.
It also represents an increase of N45.122 in the exchange rate of each dollar needed to clear goods at the port.
This means that importers opening Form M today will require more money to pay import duties than those who opened Form M on Tuesday with a lower exchange rate for cargo clearing.
BusinessDay reports that the naira on Tuesday continued its free fall across the foreign exchange market, depreciating to a new low of 1,530 per dollar on the parallel market, also known as the black market.
This represents 0.98 per cent (N15/$1) depreciation compared to N1,515 quoted on Monday on the black market.
The renewed naira depreciation after the gains in April 2024 was attributed to a shortage of dollars occasioned by the repatriation of funds by foreign portfolio investors.
Also, at the Nigerian Autonomous Foreign Exchange Market (NAFEM), the naira traded for N1,520.40/$ against the dollar on Tuesday, May 14 weaker than N1,478.11 on Monday.
According to analysts, the development is presently raising concerns among the nation’s business community as they in addition to suffering a high exchange rate of naira to the dollar, are also facing a high exchange rate for paying import duties.
