Cardoso: We Inherited $7 Billion FX Backlog, Anticipates Clearing $2 Billion Balance Soon
Olayemi Cardoso, governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), says the country will soon be free of its $7 billion foreign exchange (FX) backlog, as $2.3 billion has already been paid to foreign airlines and other sectors.
Cardoso spoke during an interview on Arise Tv monitored by DAILY IMPACT on Monday.
On September 26, 2023, the CBN governor, had said the apex bank was working on settling the $7 billion FX backlog liabilities.
The apex bank, which began clearing the debt in November 2023, recently released $500 million to various sectors to address the backlog of verified FX transactions.
On January 30, 2024, the CBN said it had concluded the payment of all verified FX claims by airlines with an additional disbursement of $64.44 million to the concerned foreign aviation firms.
Providing updates on the backlog liabilities, Cardoso said his leadership inherited the $7 billion debt, noting the central bank discovered that $2.4 billion of the sum was invalid following an enquiry into the transactions.
When we came into the leadership of the Central Bank a few months ago, the issue of foreign exchange backlog was something that we met — obviously for something that had been accumulated over a period of time. It is very important as a sovereign nation to be able to keep your integrity intact, and as a bank, to be able to show that we consider obligations as obligations that must be met,” Cardoso said.
Now, approximately $7 billion was what we were told, and we looked at these and commenced the process of starting to pay.
We were settling some which we believed were valid and due for payment, and obviously this isn’t something we could just do in one shot or take a bit of time.
