Dipo Olowookere
By Dipo Olowookere
This Monday, the foreign reserves of Nigeria finally hit $34 billion as the prices of oil in the global market continue to rise.
Nigeria depends mainly on oil as its source of forex earnings and with volume of oil production on the rise, the Africa’s largest economy is earning more, growing its reserves.
According to data released by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), which was sighted by Business Post, the foreign reserves increased to $34.009 billion on Monday, November 6, 2017 from $33.931 billion on Friday, November 3, 2017.
The last time the country’s reserves reached this figure was in the end 2014, three years before the present administration of President Muhammadu Buhari came into power.
With increasing inflow of foreign exchange earnings from crude oil, following sustained increase in the price of crude oil, Nigeria’s external reserves may hit $35 billion before the end of this year.
The reserves would have neared $40 billion by now, but for the weekly intervention of the CBN in the forex market since February 2017.
Over $4 billion has been pumped into the forex market by the apex bank since that time to keep the Naira relatively stable at the various market segments.
