Exchange Rates for Importing into Nigeria
The rate you convert at decides what your supplier’s price actually costs you. Track the currencies that matter for supplier payments, shipping and landed cost.
Covering USD, CNY, EUR and GBP, the currencies Nigerian importers actually pay in.
Current rates for import planning
Major currencies used for supplier payments, shipment planning and landed cost estimates.
Exchange rate board
Converted to Nigerian Naira
| Currency | 1 unit in Naira | What it is used for |
|---|---|---|
| Fetching rates | ||
Why the rate is a cost, not a market figure
Every imported product is priced in someone else’s currency before it becomes a naira cost. The conversion is where your real price is decided.
Two importers can buy the identical product, from the identical supplier, at the identical foreign price, and land it at different naira costs. The only difference between them is the rate on the day they paid.
The rate reaches further into the transaction than most people expect. It sets the purchase cost, the supplier payment, the shipping estimate, the customs valuation, the landed cost, and therefore your selling price and your margin.
Timing is the part that catches people
The rate you quote from is rarely the rate you pay at.
An importer prices a machine, agrees it with the supplier, prepares the budget, and pays three days later. If the rate moved in between, the same purchase now needs more naira.
A supplier quotes $8,000. At 1,500 naira to the dollar that is 12,000,000 naira. At 1,580 it is 12,640,000. The supplier has not changed his price, the machine has not changed, and the order has cost 640,000 naira more.
On a fixed budget, that gap can mean buying less, delaying the order, or abandoning it after the groundwork is already done.
What it does to landed cost
Landed cost is everything it takes to put the goods at your gate: the product, freight, duty and statutory charges, clearing, inland delivery and documentation.
Several of those start life in foreign currency, so a rate movement hits more than one line at once.
Take a product at $5,000 with $1,200 of freight, so $6,200 in total. At 1,500 that is 9,300,000 naira. At 1,600 it is 9,920,000. The rate alone has added 620,000 naira before duty is even assessed.
This is why a landed cost built on a stale rate is not a landed cost. It produces a wrong selling price and a margin that was never really there.
Dollar or Yuan
If you buy from China, both matter, but not equally on every order.
The dollar governs international trade generally. Freight, global quotations, customs valuation references and most cross-border settlement are dollar-denominated even when the goods come from China.
The yuan governs the factory. Chinese manufacturers cost their production, labour, materials and domestic logistics in yuan, and the closer you deal to the factory rather than through a trading company, the more likely your invoice is in yuan.
The practical question is not which currency is more important in general. It is which currency your invoice is written in, because that is the rate that will decide your payment. Watch the other one anyway, since it shapes what your supplier quotes over time.
Small movements, large orders
A twenty naira move looks trivial until you multiply it by the size of an import.
On $10,000, twenty naira is 200,000. On $50,000, the same twenty naira is a million naira. On a machine invoiced at 100,000 yuan, a five naira move is 500,000 naira.
For an importer working on a normal margin, that is not a rounding difference. It is a meaningful share of the profit, decided by something that happened while the paperwork was being prepared.
Which is why the rate is worth checking at four points rather than one: when you first price the product, before you commit to the supplier, before you pay, and when you finalise your landed cost.
External Reserves Are Stronger Than Previous Years
CBN Is Still Cautious on Inflation
Yuan Matters More for Direct China Supplier Payments
USD Remains the Main Import Pricing Currency
Parallel Market Still Creates Extra Import Cost Pressure
Naira Holds Within a Narrow Official Market Range
Find out what this does to your import
Tell us what you are planning to bring in and we will work through the product, the shipment and the currency exposure, and tell you what it is likely to land at. There is no charge for this.