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The Central Bank of Nigeria has reported that Nigeria’s foreign exchange reserves rose by $594 million in five days. The CBN said the reserves rose to $26.2 billion as at August 29 from $25.6 billion recorded on August 24.

The rise in the FX reserves comes after the interbank FX market recorded $327 million worth of trades on Monday due mainly to foreign portfolio investors who bought $270 million worth of local currency bonds.

Nigeria’s FX reserves have been hit hard by the slump in global oil prices, which slashed the country’s FX earnings from oil and gas. On a year-to-date basis, the FX reserves have fallen by 9.3 percent from $28.89 billion recorded on January 4 to latest figure.

On June 20, the CBN floated the naira on the interbank FX market in a bid to ease the pressure on its FX reserves and end the country’s lingering FX scarcity. However, the CBN’s move has not yielded the desired results as the naira closed at N305.5 per dollar at the official market on Monday, but reached N405 per dollar at the parallel market.