Global oil price edged upwards in the review week. International crude benchmark, Brent, rose week-on-week by 3.1 percent to $50 per barrel as at July 21, 20173 a level it had not attained since June. The remarkable gains followed demand-side progress earlier statistics from China showed increase in crude imports, indicating prospects of higher demand. This was also complimented by the huge drop in US domestic crude production (Crude reserves fell by 4.7 million barrels). If the trend is sustained, Nigeria could record further rise in its Gross Federally Collected Revenue. Nevertheless, there remains a need for Nigeria to overcome the challenge of harnessing its oil and gas resources by making strategic policy choices andensuring coordination in policy implementation to minimize macroeconomic distortions.

Nigerias external reserve fell marginally by from $25.36 billion to $25.16 billion. The decline likely reflects the continued sales of dollar by CBN amid fall in oil revenue. Similarly, the naira/dollar exchange rate depreciated marginally by 0.5 percent to N424/$ at the parallel segmentas also seen in preceding weeks. The continued depreciation likely points to banks low level compliance to CBNs dollar sales directive made in August, 2016, thus creating artificial dollar scarcity in the parallel market.