Nigeria’s foreign reserves shed ‘$43.6 million daily’ in October

Nigeria’s foreign reserves lost an average of $43,604,660 daily between October 2 and October 30.

Data from the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) showed that gross reserves stood at $41,765,381,999 as of October 2 and had fallen to $40,500,856,853 by October 30.

The reduction in foreign reserves may be due to a slowdown in foreign direct investments, low oil prices, debt servicing obligations and continued intervention in the foreign exchange market by the CBN.

According to the second quarter capital importation report released by the National Bureau of Statistics for the second quarter, FDI inflows dropped by 31.41% from $8.48 billion recorded in the first quarter to $5.82 billion.

Checks by TheCable also showed that the largest drops in actual terms occurred between October 4-7 where there was a drop of $190.3 million; October 11-14 with a drop of $149.18 million and October 18-24 with a drop of $115.4 million.

During these dates, there are chances that some long and short-term treasury bills that matured within the period that required repayments to the investors.

An example is a 182-day treasury bill that was auctioned on April 17, 2019 and matured on October 17.