A Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) data has revealed that Nigeria’s reserves have continued an upward trajectory, hitting $34.14 billion last Friday, having appreciated by 4.06 per cent from $32.74 billion on June 3, 2024.
According to the data, the country’s reserves are boosted by the latest rounds of loans the Federal Government got from the World Bank.
In May, the Bureau of Public Enterprises (BPE) disclosed that the Federal Government had secured a $500 million World Bank loan to bolster the country’s electricity distribution sector.
Also, the World Bank revealed that the country would get $2.25 billion support to enable it to stabilise the economy.
“This combined $2.25bn package provides immediate financial and technical support to Nigeria’s urgent efforts to stabilise the economy and scale up support to the poor and most economically at risk.
“It further supports Nigeria’s ambitious, multi-year effort to raise non-oil revenues and safeguard oil revenues to promote fiscal sustainability and provide sufficient resources to deliver quality public services”, The multilateral lender stated in a statement.
Last year, the country struggled with a shortage of dollars, which forced the central bank to float the naira, to increase foreign exchange inflow.
The local currency has, thereafter, depreciated by over 300 per cent in one year to 1,514.31/$ at the Nigerian Autonomous Foreign Exchange market on Friday.
According to a Bloomberg report on Friday, the naira emerged as the worst-performing currency in the world in the first half of 2024.
It noted that devaluation, insufficient dollar liquidity, and market volatility had hindered efforts by the Central Bank of Nigeria to strengthen the currency.
Besides the naira, Egypt’s pound and Ghana’s cedi were the world’s other worst performers in the first six months of the year.
“The naira’s performance is the worst among global currencies tracked by Bloomberg beside that of the pound in Lebanon, which is undergoing an economic crisis and witnessing dollarisation”,  the report noted.
Meanwhile, the CBN Governor, Olayemi Cardoso, has stated that the apex bank was “relatively pleased” with the progress made in stabilising the local currency.
“I do believe that we have more or less seen the worst in terms of volatility”,  Cardoso told Bloomberg TV.
The losing streak is the longest since July 2017 and takes the decline since the start of the year to 40 per cent.
The central bank has taken several initiatives to improve the dollar supply in the country and stabilise the local currency.
Last week, the apex bank announced that International Money Transfer Operators could now have access to the official window to sell forex.
In a circular signed by by the acting Director of the Trade and Exchange Department, Dr W.J Kanya, the apex bank said that the