Nigeria's foreign reserves have dropped to $45 billion, Governor of Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), Professor Soludo Chuwkuma has said. He said this at the weekend while briefing newsmen after the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) meeting where he said inflationary rate has dropped too.

The inflation rate as at April stood at 13.3 percent as against 14.4 percent in March, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) has said.

This is contrary to Daily Trust's market survey. This paper had reported that prices of goods and services have increased in the past few weeks. Nigeria's foreign reserves hit an all time high of $64 billion in August last year when the international oil price peaked at $147 per barrel. It started depreciating as the global economic meltdown bit harder.

CBN has consistently maintained that the increase and the decrease of the reserves is a function of inflow and outflow.

The Federal Government has said that it will finance the 2009 budget from the foreign reserves if it fails to meet its revenue projections.

Daily Trust reported that the drop in the reserves which was first noticed in September 2008 has continued to fall despite the assurance by the government that the reserves were safe. As at October 2008, the reserves stood at $58 billion but dropped to $57 billion in November 2008. From $57 billion in November, it went further down to $52 billion on December 31, 2008. The reserves further shrunk to $51billion on January 20, 2009 and $47 billion in April to now stand at $45 billion.

Experts have argued that in the face of the country's infrastructural deficiencies, government should channel the reserves to develop infrastructure. Chairman, Revenue Mobilization, Allocations and Fiscal Commission (RMAFC), Engineer Hamman Tukur has argued that both the country's Excess Crude and foreign reserves should be used to provide infrastructure. Dr. Obadiah Mailafia, a former Deputy Governor of the CBN had said that there is no need to keep so much reserve in the face of poverty in the land. He argued that the country should diversify its reserves into Eurozone.