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Official foreign exchange receipt from crude oil sales into Nigeria’s official reserves has dried up steadily from above US$3.0 billion monthly in 2014 to an absolute zero dollars today.
This is according to the Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), Godwin Emefiele in an address on Friday 25th November, 2022 at the 57th Annual Bankers Dinner in Lagos.
The theme for the event was “Radical Responses to Abnormal Episodes: Time for Innovative Decision-making.”
The country is unable to meet its meagre production quota as recorded domestic crude oil production plunged from over 1.9 million barrels per day as of April 2020 to 1.1 million barrels per day by September 2022.
“Given Nigeria’s dependence on crude oil for close to 80 percent of our foreign exchange earnings, the drop in production has resulted in a significant drop in our foreign exchange earnings as well as government revenue,” Emefiele said.
In recent time the downward short-run trend of the external reserves reappeared at the beginning of 2022, according to Emefiele.
After recovery from US$33.7 billion in March 2020 to US$41.6 billion in September 2021, official reserves fell to about US$37 billion as at October 2022.