Our Correspondent 
To further boost investors’ confidence, efforts are in top gear to delist Nigeria from nations with shortcomings in tackling illicit financial flows.
The Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) Yemi Cardoso, disclosed this yesterday at the joint press briefing of the Finance Ministry and the apex bank in Washington D.C.
Cardoso also said Nigeria was targeting a monthly Diaspora inflow of $1billion.
These positive developments came just as Nigeria’s Minister of Finance and coordinating Minister of the Economy, Wale Edun, said the bold reforms embarked upon by the President Bola Tinubu administration were yielding fruits.
The Financial Action Task Force (FATF) leads global action to tackle money laundering, identifies jurisdictions with weak measures to combat money laundering and terrorist financing in two FATF public documents that are issued three times a year.
The FATF’s process to publicly list countries with weak anti-money laundering (AML) regimes has proved effective.
As of October 2024, the FATF has reviewed 137 countries and jurisdictions and publicly identified 112 of them. Of these, 85 have since made the necessary reforms to address their AML weaknesses and have been removed from the process.
Countries in the FATF list are grouped into two categories- black and grey lists. Nigeria is on the grey list.
Meanwhile, before the foreign exchange reforms, Nigeria gets an average Diaspora remittance of $350 million per month, which had risen to $600million as at last September.
The CBN governor, who led the team that addressed concerns raised by International Money Transfer Operators (IMTOs), said with assurances from Nigerians in Diaspora, the CBN was confident that it would attract $1billion monthly remittances.
“Nigeria has such a strong Diaspora community here,” he said. “With the recent announcement by Nigeria Interbank Settlement Systems (NIBBS) on Bank Verification Number (BVN), and other products that the banking industry is offering, and through engagement with the Diaspora, we believe, we will be able to increase inflows to $1 billion monthly and I’m confident that we will get there.”
Giving a breakdown of his achievements in the last one year, he said: “Our focus has been on the exchange rate, enhancing financial systems provision, fostering financial inclusion and enhancing transparency in our monetary policy decisions and communications.
“We have achieved increased transparency and improved overall supply in the foreign exchange market, leading to reduced arbitrage and speculative activities and eliminated the front loading of foreign exchange demand.”
He said the CBN’s recapitalisation policy was expected to support the realization of the $1 trillion economy by 2030.
On his part, acknowledging that there was a need to combat inflation, Edun said most of the advanced countries were close to their target level of 2 per cent, as their economies were gradually recovering. Consequently, he said this regions were gradually easing their monetary positions, which were very tight.
However, he said for emerging markets and developing economies like Nigeria, there was still relative high inflation and the majority view at this time was that interest rates has to remain high.
“At the same time, debt levels are clearly escalated and care has to be taken there and in addition, growth is low. So, as we try to make sure that inflation is low, which needs to be combated as a priority.”
That, he said, was because of the negative effect it has on purchasing power.
“But critical investments has to go on to ensure growth because at the end of the day, it is growth, job creation that will lead to poverty reduction,” he explained.
