The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) has revealed that Nigerians spent a total of $39.66bn on foreign education and healthcare-related services between 2010 and 2020.
According to CBN’s Balance of Payments, parents paid about $28.65bn for their wards to study outside Nigeria within 10 years.
The BoP report also showed that Nigerians paid $11.01bn for healthcare-related services abroad.
The amount spent on these foreign services is almost equivalent to the current value of the country’s foreign reserves which stood at $39.51bn as of March 23, highlighting its high cost.
These statistics and their impacts were cited in a financial report released last week titled, “A Simple and Factual Explanation of Nigeria’s Exchange Rate Dynamics”
According to the report, the high cost of these services has drastically increased the demand for foreign exchange in the country, which has put a strain on the value of the naira to the dollar.
The report which seeks to provide answers to questions on the continuous rise and fall of Nigeria’s exchange rate explained that the exchange rate of the naira is the price of the dominant foreign currency in the country – the US dollar.
It added that like the price of every other commodity, the price of the dollar in Nigeria is determined by the interplay of demand and supply of the foreign currency in the country’s market.
