The growing number of Nigerians emigrating for greener pastures abroad is largely responsible for Nigeria’s depleting reserves, according to the Governor of the Central Bank (CBN), Godwin Emefiele.
Most of the situation can be pinned on the number of Nigerian students seeking foreign education, he said.
He stated this at the 57th annual Bankers’ dinner organised by the Chattered Institute of Bankers of Nigeria (CIBN) in Lagos on Saturday, November 26, 2022.
The CBN boss noted that the Nigerian foreign exchange market is in the middle of a severe crisis, putting pressure on the reserves and suppressing the value of the naira.
The apex bank helmsman noted that the number of student visas given to Nigerians by the United Kingdom has spiked from a yearly average of about 8,000 visas in 2020 to almost 66,000 in 2022, implying an eight-fold increase amounting to $2.5 billion yearly in study-related forex outflow to the UK alone.
Due to this and the need to increase forex earnings, the CBN and the Bankers’ Committee started the RT200 scheme in February 2022, Emefiele said.
He said that the scheme was primarily designed to handle the issue of repatriation of non-oil export proceeds creatively. Emefiele noted that inflows via the programme in 2022 increased to about $1.6 billion, and could surpass $2.5 billion by the end of this year. He said: “Under the rebate scheme of the programme, the Bank has reimbursed a total of N78.4 billion naira, which I consider a fair price to incur to stabilise our foreign exchange market,” Emefiele said.
Before the introduction of the RT200, the CBN embarked on several initiatives to encourage forex inflow into Nigeria.
State of foreign reserve
Nigeria’s external reserves fell to $37.17 billion as of November 15, 2022, data from the CBN confirms. This is the lowest level of the external reserves this year and the lowest level since September 30, 2021, when the country faced a barrage of currency depreciation.
