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Nigeria’s foreign reserves drop to $24.74bn

Nigeria’s foreign reserves drop to $24.74bn

Nigeria

Nigeria’s Minister of Budget and National Planning, Udoma Udo Udoma has announced that the country’s foreign reserves have reduced from $26.51 billion in the second quarter of 2016 to $24.74 billion in September.

Udoma disclosed this at the 57th annual conference of Nigerian Economic Society with the theme “the developmental state and diversification of the Nigerian economy.”

He said African’s largest economy had revenue and foreign currency concentration problems, adding that diversification was the only solution.

The Minister noted that due to four strategic pipeline terminals that were blown up, Nigeria had been unable to achieve its 2016 Budget production target of 2.2 million barrels a day.

He had in August, said the country was barely able to produce 1.1 million barrels.

“Last week production level rose up to 1.7 million barrels, still a far cry from the country’s target of 2.2 million barrels. “We are taking a number of immediate measures to raise revenues to strategically spend our way out of recession” he said.

“We are fast tracking our efforts to raise foreign currency loans that we have projected in the 2016 budget, from AfDB, World Bank, Chinese Exim Bank as well as Euro Bond issue.

He reiterated that the economic management team had been working to assemble a stimulus package to be raised from concessioning advance payment for licence renewals.

He explained that the package was being worked upon and was yet to be finalised, adding that to achieve this speedily, “we are working to fast track procedures through presidential directives and legislation.

Udoma said that the government was working on a programme with the private sector to launch made-in-Nigeria campaign.

Nigeria's Foreign Reserves Drop…See Current Value – Udo Udoma The Minister of Budget and National Planning, U… https://t.co/VWd4yHmVH5

— etima (@etima17584027) September 28, 2016

In January, the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) estimated that Nigeria’s Forex earnings declined from around 3.2 billion dollars monthly to about one billion dollars monthly.

The CBN gave the figure as the reason it imposed the strict capital controls to protect the country’s reserves.

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