Dipo Olowookere
By Dipo Olowookere
Data released by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) on its website and viewed by Business Post has revealed that Nigeria’s foreign reserves suffered a decline on a weekly basis by 0.25 percent to $30.91 billion.
This figure was at Thursday, May 11, 2017.
The external reserves dropped on Thursday from $30.92 billion it was on Wednesday.
Business Post observed that since on Friday, May 5, 2017, there had been a decline in the amount left in the foreign reserves of the West Africa’s biggest economy. This is despite a rebound in global crude oil prices by 1.96 percent to $48.37 per barrel according to OPEC’s reference basket price.
This followed a percentage drop in US commercial crude oil inventories (excluding those in the Strategic Petroleum Reserve) to 522.50 million barrels as at Friday, May 5, 2017.
Lately, the CBN has consistently released foreign exchange into the market to ease the huge pressure on the local currency, the Naira.
The banking industry watchdog gets this forex from the country’s foreign reserves. It had maintained that this intervention would be sustained and possibly ensures that the gap between the official and parallel segments of the forex market was narrowed to about $5.
At the moment, the gap between both markets is over $80.
As at the time of filing this report, the CBN Dollar rate was N305.60k, while it went for N386 at the parallel market.
