The Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, Olayemi Cardoso, has disclosed that the foreign exchange inflows recorded in the first quarter of 2024 into Nigeria were about 136 per cent of the total inflows recorded in 2023.
Cardoso said this during a meeting of Economic Discourse themed ‘Reforms in The Era of Global Economic Uncertainties: Whither Nigeria’, which was held in Lagos on Thursday.
The apex bank governor, represented by the Director of Risk, CBN, Blaise Ijebor, said, “We remain committed to using all the orthodox monetary policy tools available to us to address inflation. We have also embarked on major reforms to liberalise the foreign exchange market, which has enhanced transparency, reduced arbitrage opportunities, promoted stability and improved the liquidity in the market.
“The settlement of all valid FX forwards, which was one of my commitments when I came on as governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, has also improved the confidence of stakeholders. We are already seeing the result of these reforms in the growth of FX flows into the country. The FX flows into the country in Q1 of 2024 was 136 per cent of the total inflows that we had in the whole of 2023.”
The CBN has been issuing a flurry of circulars on the forex market in a bid to sanitise the system.
The regulator recently licensed 14 new International Money Transfer Operators, as it sought to double remittances into the country.
At the end of the Monetary Policy Committee meeting on Tuesday in Abuja, the CBN governor said, “Our target, of course, is to double remittance flows within the year and as I said, we have started that process to ensure that it happens.”
