The money spent covered tuition fees, accommodation, living expenses, and other related costs of studying abroad.
The CBN, Governor, Godwin Emefiele, has repeatedly emphasized that Nigeria’s growing demand for foreign education is straining the country’s external reserves and affecting the naira exchange rate value. Foreign education is classified under personal travel allowances (PTA), recorded as debit transactions in the country’s balance of payments.
The balance of payments (BoP) records all financial transactions between a country and the rest of the world over a specific period.
In Q3 of 2022, the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) reported a current account deficit of $603.14 million. In the nine months, the deficit amounted to $1 billion due to more outflows than inflows.
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NNPCL has 1.8bn litres of petrol stock – Muhammad A negative balance in the BoP means that Nigeria sent more foreign exchange to other countries during the review period than it received, thereby depleting the external reserves and negatively impacting the country’s exchange rate.
The outflow of funds from Nigeria to finance foreign education and other expenses has contributed to the current account deficit, the report indicated.
Therefore, there is a need to prioritize investment in the Nigerian education sector to prevent capital flight and strengthen the country’s external reserves. In another report, the CBN said diaspora remittances has grew to N2.4 billion to N41.5 billion weekly since introducing the Naira4Dollar scheme.
The bank said the scheme has led to a great and meaningful improvement in the diaspora remittances into Nigeria.
According to the bank, in January 2022 alone, the scheme increased from $6 million to $100 million.
