The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) has called for diversification of sources of foreign exchange inflow into the country.

An authoritative source at the apex bank told the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Lagos on Sunday that scarcity of the dollar was responsible for its current slide at the black market.

He said that the CBN had not devalued the naira, but scarcity of foreign currencies was responsible for the depreciation of the naira at the parallel market.

According to the source, the CBN has always advocated for diversification of sources of foreign exchange into the country rather than depending solely on sale of crude oil.

He said that the apex bank had taken several initiatives to shore up the value of the naira by increasing productivity in the country.

The source said that the CBN realised that restricting accessing to foreign exchange for the importation of food items would not automatically translate to their local production.

He said that one of the initiatives was the introduction of the Anchor Borrowers Programme (ABP) to boost local production of rice and wheat regarded as two of the four products that dominated the food import bill.

The source said the CBN also came up with a policy called Produce, Add Value and Export to earn Forex (PAVE).

He said that the rationale behind the two initiatives was to improve and deepen the foreign exchange market by improving supply of foreign exchange into the market.

He said that the CBN was trying to encourage Nigerians to export, earn export proceeds and use export proceeds to import whatever needed to be imported.

According to him, the belief is that the initiatives would reduce the import of items that the country could produce. (NAN)

•Photo shows CBN Gov. Emefiele.