As projected by the Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), Mr. Godwin Emefiele, at the Annual Bankers’ Dinner of the Chartered Institute of Bankers in Lagos last November, the nation’s external reserves have hit a new level of$40.4billion. This is even as the Bank on Monday injected$210million into the Interbank Foreign Exchange Market in the first round of trading for the year.

Figures obtained from the CBN indicate that the external reserves reached the$40.4billion mark on Friday, January 5, 2018, indicating an increase of about US$1 billion between December 2017 and January 2018.

Confirming the figure, the Acting Director in charge of Corporate Communications at the CBN, Isaac Okorafor attributed the accretion to the country’s reserves to the Bank’s strategy to effectively manage foreign exchange demand by various sectors of the economy.

Citing the CBN policy restricting access toforeign exchangefrom the Nigeria'sforeign exchangemarket by importers of some 41 items as the major turning point, Okorafor said the policy had helped to stop the hemorrhaging of the country’s external reserves, which hitherto witnessed heavy depletion due to huge import bills and other debt obligations. According to him, the CBN policy had ensured a decline in Nigeria’s import bills from over$5billion monthly in 2015 to about$1.5billion in 2017.

He expressed optimism that with the determination of the bank and the cooperation of the fiscal authorities, the external reserves would continue to enjoy more accretion in the course of the year.

Meanwhile, the CBN injected$210million into interbank window of the foreign exchange market on Monday to meet requests in the wholesale, Small and Medium Enterprises and invisibles segments of the market.

A breakdown of the figure indicated that the CBN offered $100m to the wholesale sector, while the Small and Medium Enterprises and invisibles windows each received$55million.