The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), on Thursday said the nation’s external reserves pool hit a new high of $33bn, representing a $7.156bn or 27.69% growth year-to-date from $25.843bn.
The increase was announced by Isaac Okoroafor, the CBN’s Acting Director of Corporate Communications, at the 24th Seminar for Finance Correspondents and Business Editors holding in Awka, Anambra State with the theme: “Import Substitution and the Dynamics of Interest and Exchange Rates in Nigeria.”
The figure increased also from $31.811bn, representing a $1.188bn or 3.73% on August 29, 2017 according to data on the apex bank’s website.
Declaring the seminar open, Emefiele reiterated the CBN’s resolve to continue to explore further avenues to ensure that interest rates are supportive of domestic production needs in line with its core mandate.
According to him, the apex bank will continually fine tune measures to ensure and guarantee a stable exchange rate regime, just as he spoke of the bank’s moves to tame inflation and guaranteeing exchange rate stability.
Represented by Okorafor, Emefiele who went down memory lane on measures adopted in the past to drive the economy, boost production, manage and stabilize the exchange rate as well as reduce inflation, Emefiele said the CBN is consistently devising ingenious approaches to solve peculiar challenges and will continue to learn from the experiences of other countries, particularly developing nations.