By Modupe Gbadeyanka
Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), Mr Godwin Emefiele, has assured Nigerians that the country will finally pull out of recession in second or latest third quarter of this year.
He made this disclosure on Tuesday in Abuja after a closed-door meeting with the Senate, led by its President, Mr Bukola Saraki.
During the meeting, the central bank boss briefed the Senate leadership on foreign exchange, fiscal and monetary policies all aimed at getting the country out of recession.
“We are very much optimistic that by the end of the second quarter, very latest third quarter, we should be out of recession that we are in right now,” Mr Emefiele assured Nigerians.
He told newsmen that the CBN had in the last two months embarked on “some form of intensive intervention” to help the Naira perform better at the foreign exchange market, saying this has crashed the Dollar to about N370 and N380 against over N520 it traded before the move.
He promised that the CBN would “continue this intervention,” emphasising that, “the reserve looks very good.”
According to him, Nigeria’s foreign reserves stand at “above $31 billion.”
He pointed out that this “provides us enough of firepower or ammunition to be able to defend the currency and we will do so with all intensity to ensure that foreign exchange is procured by everybody.”
Speaking further, he said, “We have started to see a downward trend even in prices and you have also must observe that inflation is also trending downward.”
“You want to import raw materials, you will get foreign exchange, you want to import plant and equipment you will get foreign exchange, you want to pay school fees or you are a small business that wants to buy foreign exchange for you to import your small items you will procure foreign exchange,” he also said.
“I think what is important is that last week we brought out an announcement which is meant to encourage our foreign investor community to get involved as well in the foreign exchange market.
“It is the market or window that is opened for them to inflow their foreign exchange and come into the market on what we called a willing buyer, willing seller basis in which case there will be no form of any price intervention by anybody and indeed even including the Central Bank.
“Indeed with the kind of firepower that we have we are also going to play in that market to ensure that as the prices move on based on the managed float regime that we run that we should be able to control the price based on willing buyer and willing seller basis.
“And we believe on willing buyer, willing seller basis, foreign investors, exporter, non-exporters can come into that market and off load their capital and in doing so, we expect to see a lot of liquidity in that market and as we see much of liquidity in that market, we are very much optimistic that we are going to see high level of convergence we are hoping for,” he disclosed.
