The Central Bank of Nigeria has released a total sum of $2.97bn to oil sector players for the importation of petroleum products and other related items into the country, The PUNCH reports.
The amount released between 2022 and the first quarter of 2024 is against the backdrop of the significant energy crisis in Nigeria, fuel shortage, and the insistence of marketers to continue fuel import despite the availability of petrol from Dangote Refinery.
Fuel imports, a significant consumer of foreign exchange, impact the country’s foreign reserves and the naira to dollar rate.
On Thursday, the Minister of Finance and Coordinating Minister of the Economy, Wale Edun, said the country now records about $2.35bn as net inflow into the Central Bank foreign reserves.
Nigeria’s external reserves currently stand at $37.24bn as of September 17, 2024.
A breakdown using the quarterly statistical bulletin for the first quarter of 2024 showed that the apex bank released $1.41bn in 2022 for fuel imports. The figure dropped to $1.03bn in 2023, representing a decline of 26.9 per cent.
In the first quarter of 2024, the bank allocated a total sum of $522.9m, indicating 0.01per cent of $4bn spent on imports in the period under review, but 12.86 per cent increase when compared to the $463.3m recorded in the preceding period of 2023.
The CBN’s data on sectoral utilisation for transactions valid for forex revealed that $173.88m was utilised in January 2023 for fuel imports; $137.67m in February, and $151.75m in March.
Forex for fuel import transactions fell to $132.36m in April and $ 117.92m in May but rose to $89.85m in June.
The country utilised $45.82m in July and zero dollars in August for petroleum products importation.
The apex bank said $42.43m was used for fuel imports in September, $38.46m in October, $51.95m in November and $52.14m in December.
In the second quarter of 2024, the National Bureau of Statistics said the value of Nigeria’s import of PMS rose to N3.22tn – the highest on record in the nation’s history.
It added that the importation of petrol in the second quarter of 2024 constituted 25 per cent of total imports in the period.
Furthermore, the N3.2tn petrol import bill in Q1 2024 marks a 100 per cent increase in the value of petrol import compared to the same period of 2023 which stood at N1.6tn.
In the first quarter of 2024 so far, the value of petrol imports reached N2.6tn while cumulatively in the first six months of the year, the country’s petrol import bill stood at N5.8tn.
When compared to the same period of 2023, the country’s petrol import bill has increased from N3.1tn to N5.8tn. This denotes an increase of 87.09 per cent during the period.
