Nigeria is expecting as much as $10 billion in new foreign currency inflows in the next few weeks to ease acute dollar shortages in the foreign exchange market, Wale Edun, the finance minister said Monday during the ongoing NESG conference.
Edun said President Bola Tinubu on Thursday signed two executive orders to support the currency market, which has been on a freefall due to chronic dollar shortages.
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He said the government would allow domestic issuance of instruments in foreign currency and also allow all cash outside the banking system to be brought into the banks.
Nigeria is in the middle of a foreign exchange crisis that has sent the naira tumbling on both the official and parallel markets, worsening a cost of living crisis for businesses and households in Africa’s most populous nation.
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There’s an estimated $10 billion dollar demand backlog that has knocked confidence in the new administration’s far-reaching fx reforms which say the naira slide by 40 percent in one fell swoop in June.
