Governor Godwin Emefiele of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), has blamed Nigerians relocating abroad for the fall of naira.
Emefiele made this submission at the 57th Annual Bankers Dinner, organised by the Chartered Institute of Bankers Nigeria (CIBN), in Lagos.
While noting that the number of student visas given to Nigerians by the United Kingdom (UK) 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 country alone, the CBN chief said the move had immensely put pressure on Nigeria’s foreign reserves and the Naira.
According to him, due to this and the need to increase forex earnings, the CBN and the Bankers’ Committee started the RT200 scheme in February 2022.
He added that the steady increase in headline inflation from 15.60% in January to 20.77% in September was consistent with global trends.
“Food remains the major component of domestic consumer price basket. The annualised uptick in headline inflation mirrors the 6.21 percentage points upsurge in food inflation to 23.34% in September.
“During this period, core inflation also resumed an upward movement from 13.87% in January to 17.60%.
“In addition to harsh global spillovers, exchange rate adjustments, and imported inflation; inflation was also driven by local factors such as farmer-herder clashes in parts of the food belt region,” he added.
