The Central Bank of Nigeria has said that the country’s external reserves dropped by $314.927m from $36.214bn on June 28, 2020 to $35.899bn on July 28, 2020, indicating a drop of about one per cent.
According to CBN data obtained by Financial Street on Friday, Nigeria’s external reserves in the period was made up of CBN reserves with $27.52bn (81.7 per cent), Federal Government reserves $5.85bn (17.4 per cent) and federation reserves $0.32bn (0.9per cent).
The apex bank had in its economic report for the first quarter of the year noted that the country’s foreign reserves fell to $33.69bn, 11.6 per cent lower than the figure posted the quarter before.
This value would accommodate goods and services imports for up to 4.5 months or importation of goods for 7.3 months alone, according to imports estimate for January to March 2020.
The CBN Governor, Godwin Emefiele, stressed the imperative of the country to scale down dependence on oil money by increasing economic expansion and broadening of fiscal base through accelerated tax collection at the last Monetary Policy Committee meeting of the apex bank.
He said, “Central to the committee’s considerations was the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, the oil price shock and the likely short- to medium-term consequences on the Nigerian economy,” Emefiele said.
According to him, the steady advancement in macro-economic variables, especially in the stock market, the control measures of the coronavirus crisis and the effect of oil price appreciation on the external reserves were observed by the committee.
