The Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, Godwin Emefiele, said that Nigeria’s Foreign Reserve had amplified from $29bn to $31.8bn since the new administration began.
Emefiele spoke with the press after a closed door meeting in the Senate on Wednesday, July 8.
He assured Nigerians that any action taken by the Central Bank with regards to the economy is in the interest of our country, reiterating that the country’s resources have to be protected.
“I must use this opportunity to commend the efforts of President Muhammadu Buhari for his dogged approach in seeing that all loopholes are blocked.
“With those efforts and strong determination, we have seen our foreign reserves moving from about $29.1bn when his Excellency took over on 29th of May to $31.89 billion that it is at this time.
“We briefed the Senate about all the actions that we have taken as well as other things that we are going to do to strengthen the Nigerian economy and create jobs and the Senate has endorsed our actions.
“We are going to continue to avoid situations where speculators take advantage of the drop in crude oil prices to plunder our foreign reserves,” he said.
Emefiele gave a list of recent policies, including: placement of 72-hour limit on foreign exchange utilization by customers; introduction of a bank-around CBN tentative rate and bank on selective items from assets to foreign exchange; and review of operators’ net open position
Other policy items include the closure of the official foreign exchange window and introduction of a two-way based quota system.
The CBN governor added that the policies have allowed for the balance and development of exchange rates.
He said: “Having earlier traded at as high as N206 to a dollar, the naira to dollar exchange rate has appreciated and remained around N197 to a dollar in the interbank market in the last five months.”
As at May 29, 2015, when Buhari was sworn in as the president, the nation’s reserves stood at $29.1bn. They dropped from $37.3bn as at June 2014.
