Nigeria’s foreign exchange reserve in the first half of 2017 grew by 16 per cent despite the several interventions of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) at the foreign exchange market standing at $30.271 billion as at June 29, 2017 according to latest data on the website of the apex bank.
The reserves which stood at $26.097 billion at the beginning of the year rose by $4.2 billion by the end of the first half of the year, a figure that shows a 14.8 percent improvement from a year ago, when they stood at $26.34 billion.
It was however down 0.36 percent from a month ago and 0.08 per cent lower compared to $30.297 billion which it closed the first quarter of the year. The reserves have risen slightly this year due to the rise in global oil prices.
So far the CBN has sold close to $6 billion at the foreign exchange market to meet wholesale and retail demand. It also sells foreign exchange to small businesses and issues forex for personal and business travel allowance as well as to bureau de change operators.
CBN director, Banking Supervision, Ahmed Abdulahi had assured that the nation’s reserves are adequate to sustain its interventions despite a recent decline in oil price. The price of oil, the major foreign exchange earner of the country has in recent times fallen, dropping to $47 per barrel.
Meanwhile the value of the naira remained stable at the parallel market selling at N368 to the dollar, a price it has kept for two weeks as the local currency weakened at the interbank market to N305.9 to the dollar. At the Investors and Exporters window, the naira traded at N366 to the dollar having firmed to N340 during trading on Friday last week.
