The Minister of Budget and National Planning, Udoma Udo Udoma on Tuesday said Nigeria’s foreign reserves dropped from $26.51 billion to $24.74 billion within the second quaerter of 2016 to September.

Udoma said this during the 57th annual conference of Nigerian Economic Society with the theme “the developmental state and diversification of the Nigerian economy”.

He said diversification of the economy was the only solution to Nigeria’s revenue and foreign currency problems.

He further said Nigeria has been unable to achieve its 2016 Budget production target of 2.2 million barrels a day, due to the destruction of four terminal pipelines.

He said, “Last week production level rose up to 1.7 million barrels, still a far cry from the country’s target of 2.2 million barrel.

“We are taking a number of immediate measures to raise revenues to strategically spend our way out of recession.

“We are taking measures to address the disruption in Niger Delta to restore production.

“We are fast tracking our efforts to raise foreign currency loans that we have projected in the 2016 budget, from AfDB, World Bank, Chinese Exim Bank as well as Euro Bond issue.

“We are happy to note that the president of AfDB has announced that we should expect, among other facilities, a budget support of $1 billion dollars next month.”

Azeez