There is evidence that President Muhammadu Buhari, who vowed to eradicate corruption in Nigeria, is gradually succeeding as his anti-graft war.
The problem of funds embezzlement was one of the major focuses of Buhari’s presidential election campaign. The then APC presidential candidate vowed to put an end to public funds stealing. After taking over power, Buhari on numerous occasions reiterated commitment to his ideas.
The adopted policy appears to be working, Vanguard proves with reference to the CBN governor.
1. Foreign reserves hit $31.5bn following blockage of leakages
Nigeria’s foreign reserves have increased from $28.57 billion at the end of May to $31.53 billion as of July 22, 2015.
This was officially disclosed on July 24 by the governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, Godwin Emefiele, who spoke at the press conference in Abuja.
The official explained that the substantial increase occurred as a result of blockage of leakages and effective bank management policies.
“It is true that Mr President, based on his insistence that leakages must be blocked, there have been serious attempts to block leakages both in Naira and in Dollars. Some funds have been trapped in banks and that is the reason there is a vigorous effort to ensure that we all embrace the Single Treasury Account where all revenues collected must come to the centre and after all the revenues have come to the centre, then based on the budget that has been approved for any agency of government, whatever is due to them to meet their operational expenses would be given.
“But first point is that all revenues must come to the centre. In the course of these, yes, I can confirm that there were leakages that have been blocked and as a result we have seen some funds trapped in some areas now coming into the centre and that is part of the reason you see the reserves build up.”
2. Refineries in Port Harcourt and Warri resume operations, Kaduna refinery begins functioning in August
Emefiele reveled this adding that one of the current objectives is to reduce fuel importation. He provided that already next month the amount of locally refined products might reach 20m litres.
“Let me confirm that the CBN and the NNPC have held a couple of meetings and I am aware that Port Harcourt and Warri have started refining petroleum products. We are expecting that in the month of August, Kaduna refinery will begin refining petroleum products.
“Hopefully, as they ramp up production, they would be able to get to about 19 to 20 million litres that they can produce to meet our daily consumption level of about 30 million litres. Our interest as CBN is that by this act alone we are going to record a drastic reduction in the importation of petroleum products which will ultimately help our reserve position and help us in our mandate of strengthening the exchange rate.”
3. CBN remains firm on monetary policies
The governor said that the CBN had preserved the Monetary Policy Rate at 13% and the Cash Reserve Ratio – at 31%.
He insisted that the monetary policy would remain tight because of the high liquidity in the system.
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