It is not a secret that nowadays the Nigerian currency suffers a serious pressure because of numerous factors and blackouts. However, the federal government is trying to fix the Naira at a stable exchange rate.
The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) has published the statistics which show that huge amounts were spent by the bank to support the naira.
According to the available data, the CBN sold about $200millon daily for some month. That measure means that the currency amounts were sold from state reserves. After that the government was able to form the official rate.
But this action can not be regarded as a successful one.
The CBN announced that the reserves for March 2015 dropped by $8billion when compared to what it was at the end of March 2014.
The organization said: “The stock of external reserves at end-March 2015 stood at $29.36billion as against $34.24billion and $37.4billion recorded at end-December 2014 and end-March 2014, indicating respective depletion of $4.9bn or 14.3 % and $8bn or 21.5 %. The depletion was mainly due to the funding of the rDAS window and intervention at the interbank market to stabilise the naira exchange rate. The current level of external reserves, which is equivalent to 7.1 months of import commitment, could also finance 6.8 months of foreign exchange disbursements and 5.2 months of imports of goods and services.”
If Nigeria continues spending the national reserves, another naira crisis will be possible in the nearest future.
The CBN has been acting extremely intensively to defend the naira. Only this month three important steps have been taken. Previously the bank acted to reduce ATM withdrawal limits and prioritise school fees. Furthermore, deposit money banks rejected cash deposit of foreign currencies.
On the official interbank market the naira stay unchanged at 197 to the dollar while parallel market rate is 217 for dollar.
No comments:
Post a Comment