CBN guarantees investors of dollars for funds repatriation
Investors interested in repatriating their funds from the country are guaranteed to get their money, despite the drop in Nigeria’s revenue from crude oil, the Central Bank of Nigeria has said.
“The CBN has put in place policies to ensure an orderly exit for those that might be interested in doing so,” the CBN Governor, Mr Godwin Emefiele, said on Twitter on Sunday.
Foreign Exchange available would be devoted to strategic importation or service obligations that are priority.
Reuters had reported last Thursday that foreign investors were seeking to exit naira assets, with traders putting a backlog of demand for dollars at between $1.5bn and $1.8bn.
It said the CBN had yet to sell dollars to the investors.
Nigeria, Africa’s biggest oil producer, has seen its oil revenues decline by nearly 90 per cent amid the slump in prices caused by the coronavirus pandemic, according to the Director General, Budget Office of the Federation, Ben Akabueze.
Oil and gas represents only about 10 per cent of its GDP, but accounts for about 50 per cent of government revenues and over 90 per cent of export earnings.