The naira should not be
devalued further, President Muhammadu Buhari said on Wednesday, despite the
Central Bank of Nigeria’s growing struggles to keep the naira at current
levels.
The nation’s revenue
has been hit hard by the fall of global crude prices, and the CBN has imposed
increasingly strict foreign exchange rules to save the external reserves and
avoid what would be the third devaluation in one year.
The central bank had
devalued the naira in November last year and February this year.
Despite the CBN’s
uphill struggle to keep the naira from falling further, Buhari believes the
naira must not be devalued.
“I don’t think it is
healthy for us to have the naira devalued further,” Buhari said in an interview
with France 24.
“That’s why we are
getting the central bank to make modifications in terms of making foreign
exchange available to essential services, industries, spare parts, essential
raw materials and so on – but things like toothpicks and rice, Nigeria can
produce enough of those,” he said.
The naira had fallen to
as low as 242 per dollar on the parallel market in July, versus the official
rate of 197. It has lost around 15 per cent against the dollar over the past
year with the official devaluation in November and a de facto one in February.
In June, the CBN
restricted access to foreign exchange for the import of 41 items ranging from
rice and toothpicks to steel products and glass.
- Punch
No comments:
Post a Comment