Nigeria reports $35.6bn dollar reserves as of September 2020, as the Central Bank of Nigeria resumes sales to bureaux de change starting September 7, with initial sales of $10,000 per BDC twice a week.
The banks’ data obtained by Financial Street indicated.
However, with the absence dollar sales at the investor and exporters window since April, the portion of trapped foreign portfolio investors holdings of maturing fixed income instruments is estimated at $4.51bn, according to data from Nova Merchant Bank.
Nova, however, expects a gradual increase month-on-month as activities pick up, with sales over the next four months totalling $2.1bn.
Most of the funds have yet to be repatriated and expected to be rolled over to the rest of the year.
“Assuming 25 per cent repatriation of backlog and maturing offshore holdings between September and December, even with resumption of sales to BDC and imports/services demand, the gross reserve could close the year at $31.0bn on our best-case scenario,” Nova explained.
It assumed that if 50 per cent of the backlog and maturing offshore holdings were repatriated between September and December, the gross external reserves could end the year at $28.0bn.
