Nigeria’s external reserves last week leaped marginally with the 30-day moving average rising to $26.4 billion as at Wednesday June 8, 2016, according to latest data provided by the Central Bank of Nigeria, CBN.
The external reserves had consistently been depleted in the past months, shedding a total of $2.67 billion or 9.18 per cent since the beginning of 2016.
As at January 4, 2016, the reserves was $28.957 billion but had consistently trended downwards to $26.372 billion as at June 2, 2016, before rising to $26.4 billion.
Although global oil price has been on the rise, accretion to the reserves was lower than expected as violence in the Niger Delta region reduced the country’s oil output which dropped to its lowest levels since April 2015, according to data from the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation.
With crude oil selling at above $51 per barrel at the international market, Nigeria’s output stood at 57.43 million barrels for March, or just over 1.8 million barrels a day, a decline of more than 3 per cent from the over 2 million barrels a day recorded in the previous month. Angola has now overtaken Nigeria as the continent’s largest crude exporter.
