Nigerians and investors have been reassured by President Bola Tinubu that there is an ongoing initiative to increase the nation’s foreign exchange liquidity.
The country was expecting inflows of roughly $10 billion in the near future, according to Wale Edun, Minister of Finance and Coordinating Minister of the Economy, which would help to clear foreign exchange backlog and stabilize the naira.
Addressing on Monday at the 29th Nigerian Economic Summit in Abuja, Tinubu acknowledged the difficulties the business community was having in the financial markets and gave them the assurance of more foreign exchange liquidity to regain market confidence.
He said, “In addition, from the supply of foreign exchange through NNPC, increased production, reduced expenditure, from transactions such as forward sales, from our discussions with sovereign wealth funds, that are ready to invest and provide advanced alongside that investment, there is a line of sight of $10bn worth of foreign exchange in the relatively near future in weeks rather months.”
The Minister also disclosed that the President had signed two executive orders geared towards ensuring liquidity in the forex market.
He said, “Mr. President announced that he had taken measures to ease illiquidity in the forex market which we know is very problematic at this time.
“The market is illiquid; it’s not functioning properly because there is no supply and there are various reasons for that. The solution that the President has put on the table is that he has signed an executive order that effectively allows under forbearance all the cash that is in the domestic economy to legally come into the formal money supply”
