CBN’s efforts on Economic hardship, yielding results - Cardoso

By Abiodun OBA

Olayemi Cardoso, the governor of the apex bank has stated that the bank’s efforts were beginning to yield results to ease the economic situation in the country.

Cardoso made this known on Friday when he appeared alongside the economic team before the Senate Committee on Finance, Banking, Insurance, and Financial Institutions.

The Senate had summoned the economic team including the CBN governor, Minister of Finance, Wale Edun; the Minister of Budget and Economic Planning, Atiku Bagudu, the Minister of Agriculture, Abubakar Kyari, to address the current economic situation and more importantly, the free fall of the Naira and hike in prices of food.

While addressing the degradation of the naira, Cardoso said, “Distinguished Senators, these measures, aimed at ensuring a more market-oriented mechanism for exchange rate determination, will boost foreign exchange inflows, stabilize the exchange rate, and minimize its pass-through to domestic inflation.

“Indeed, they have already started yielding early results with significant interest from Foreign Portfolio Investors (FPIs) that have already begun to supply the much-needed foreign exchange to the economy.

“For example, upwards of $1 billion in the last few days came in to subscribe to the Nigeria Treasury Bill auction of 1 trillion Naira which saw an oversubscription earlier this week.

He added, “Our measures aimed at improving USD supply into the Nigerian economy, have significant potential in taming the volatility of the exchange rates. However, for these measures to be sustainable, we must moderate our demand for FX as a country.”

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