Index to Nigerian Newspapers

The dollar has crashed to between N805 to N790 at the parallel exchange market on Tuesday Daily Trust can authoritatively report. It started a steady decline from N925 to N930 that it was exchanged in the morning till around 4:00 pm when news about a possible Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) intervention filtered through to the Bureau De Change (BDC) operators. Recall that the CBN announced plans to take critical decisions to reverse the slide of the naira in the next few days, thereby resulting in significant losses to the speculators. The acting CBN governor, Folashodun Shonubi, dropped the hint on Monday while briefing State House reporters after a meeting with President Bola Ahmed Tinubu at the Presidential Villa, Abuja.

American multinational financial services firm, JP Morgan has estimated Nigeria’s FX reserve to be around $3.7 billion as of the end of 2022.The bank disclosed this in its latest report on Nigeria titled “Nigeria: Reform pause rather than fatigue”.  The report also predicted headline inflation to reach 28% by the end of the year on the back of rising food prices and other impacts of President Bola Tinubu’s reforms.Daily Trust recalled that Nigeria’s external reserves as of December 29, 2022 was put at $37.09bn, a drop of $3.43bn from $40.52bn as of the end of December 31, 2021, according to data from the Central Bank of Nigeria, CBN.However, JP Morgan noted that the lower-than-reported FX reserve is the result of larger currency swaps and borrowings against the FX reserve.The bank, which made a few assumptions in arriving at the estimates, noted that, “Based on partial information from the audited financial accounts, we estimate that CBN’s net FX reserves were around US$3.7bn at the end of last year, from US$14.0bn at the end-2021.”The Nigerian National Petroleum Company (NNPC) Limited recently secured a $3 billion in crude-for-cash funding from the African Export-Import Bank (Afreximbank) to shore up the nation’s FX reserve