Foreign exchange transactions at the Investors and Exporters window have risen over $55 billion since the inception in April 2017, Godwin Emefiele, governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) said at the weekend in Benin.
Speaking at the 1st Convocation Lecture Edo State University Iyamho, Edo State, he said Nigeria’s external reserves have risen to US$42 billion in September 2019 from US$23 billion in October 2016.
The county’s current stock of external reserves is now able to finance over 9 months of current import commitments. With improved availability of foreign exchange, the exchange rate at the I&E FX window has remained stable over the past 24 months at an average of N360/US$, and the parallel market exchange rate has appreciated from N525/US$ in February 2017 to N360/US$ today.
“The introduction of the I&E window, along with improvement in domestic production of goods have helped shore up our external reserves,” Emefiele said.
On the anchor borrowers programme, the CBN governor said so far the programme had supported more than 1.5m farmers across all the 36 states of Nigeria, in cultivating 16 different commodities over 1.4 million hectares of farmland. It has also supported the creation of over 2.5m jobs across the agricultural value chain.
He said activities in the industrial sector also witnessed significant improvement between August 2016 and September 2019, as the Primary Manufacturing Index has risen for the 31st consecutive month. It rose from a low of 42 percent in August 2016 to 58.2 percent in September 2019.
“This development was attributed to sustained supply of FX and the dogged implementation of our FX restriction on certain items”.
“The CBN has been able to reduce inflation, build our FX reserves, maintained FX market stability, and foster real growth. Nonetheless, challenges still remain,” Emefiele said.
He was concerned that the pace of population growth at about 2.6 percent still outstrips real growth rate while inflation is outside the tolerance band. Unemployment rate and incidence of poverty remain at unacceptable levels. “Our economy still faces headwinds from expected declines in global growth and its resulting impact on oil prices and capital flows to emerging market countries.
These challenges require that we strengthen our efforts at enhancing growth in productive sectors of the economy, which will help in insulating our economy from external shocks.
Nevertheless, I am happy to note that much of the success we see today is due to the adoption of unconventional macroeconomic policies”.
“We will continue to device ways of ensuring that an optimal mix of monetary policy is continually deployed to engender the overall wellbeing and prosperity of the Nigerian economy. Our overall aim remains the concurrent attainment of price stability, real growth, full employment, and poverty reduction,” he said.
