devaluation

Telecom powerhouse Airtel Africa was only a breath away from loss-making in the nine months to December after net profit crashed by 99.6 per cent. A free fall in the value of the naira in Nigeria, its biggest market for mobile service, battered earnings, according to details of its unaudited financials Thursday. Multinationals in Nigeria are grappling with the hard times created by the downside of a raft of foreign exchange reforms introduced shortly after President Bola Tinubu took office last May. The move set…

Ratings agency, Fitch took a dim view of the intrinsic creditworthiness of Ecobank Transnational Incorporated (ETI) and its local unit Ecobank Nigeria, placing both entities on watch for a potential downgrade. The two are in line to take a hit in their Viability Ratings (VRs) and Long-Term Issuer Default Ratings (IDRs) on the heels of the move to allow the naira to weaken by about 40 per cent in June. While VR assesses the innate creditworthiness of issuers, IDR is the metric indicating an issuer’s relative…

The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) has debunked reports that the apex bank devalued the naira to N631/$1 in an effort to unify the exchange rate. Newspaper reports on Thursday claimed that the CBN devalued the local currency from N461.6 to N631.00 on the Importer and Exporter (I&E) market segment on Wednesday, following President Bola Tinubu’s announcement of plans to unify the rates. However, in a statement issued Thursday by the CBN’s Assistant Director, Corporate Communications, Isa AbdulMumin, the bank…