The Central Bank of Nigeria has fulfilled its promise to give preferences to manufacturers as they got 48 per cent of forex allocation this December.
The Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), Mr. Godwin Emefiele had announced that the real sectors of the economy must be given a priority place in the access to forex which has become very scarce owing to dwindling oil fortunes.
CBN gave access to requests for foreign exchange valued at N1,003,373,891.75 through the inter-bank window to enable respective industries procure industrial raw materials and machine spare-parts, among other users.
The forex utilization figures published for this month by the bank reveals that the industrial raw material group got the highest share of N483, 075,669.82, approximating to 48.1 per cent.
Figures from the CBN report for the month December also showed that the petroleum and the aviation sectors received N372,116,111.79 and N123,666,001.06 or 37.1% and 12.2% respectively, while agriculture received N24,516,109.09 or 2.1%.
Commenting on the development, the Acting Director, Corporate Communications Department, Mr. Isaac Okorafor, reiterated the commitment and resolve of the Bank to continue to ease the foreign exchange pressure of these critical sectors through forward sales under the new Flexible Exchange regime.
The CBN in the months of September and October 2016, supported these critical sectors with $660million and $867million, respectively, to enable industrialists’ source industrial raw materials and spare-parts through the interbank Forex market.