It comes a day after the central bank said it would adopt a flexible
exchange rate policy, a shift from a peg for the naira seen as
overvalued, which has hampered growth and investment.
Central
Bank Governor Godwin Emefiele speaks during the monthly Monetary Policy
Committee meeting in Abuja, Nigeria January 26, 2016.
Nigeria's
parliament on Wednesday summoned the central bank governor and the
finance minister to explain how a shift to a more flexible foreign
exchange policy could help Africa's biggest economy to contend with its worst crisis in decades.
It
comes a day after the central bank said it would adopt a flexible
exchange rate policy, a shift from a peg for the naira seen as
overvalued, which has hampered growth and investment.
President Muhammadu Buhari
has rejected any moves that could lead to a devaluation of the naira,
whose official rate has been pegged at around 197 to the dollar since
last February but it is trading at some 40 percent below that on the
parallel market.
Announcing the policy shift on Tuesday, Central Bank Governor Godwin Emefiele said "a lot of details will be provided in the coming days".
The Senate, parliament's upper house, passed a motion to invite Emefiele and Finance Minister Kemi Adeosun for a briefing.
"The
Senate accordingly resolves to invite the minister of finance and the
governor of the central bank to brief the Senate on the monetary/fiscal
policies adopted to salvage the current economic situation," messages on the Senate's Twitter feed said.
No date has been fixed for the briefing with Emefiele and Adeosun.
The OPEC
member has been hit hard by low world prices for crude, sales of which
account for around 70 percent of national income. Gross domestic product
contracted by 0.4 percent in the first quarter of the year, the
statistics office said last week.
Nigerian stocks
rose to near a 5-month high on Wednesday, driven by hopes that the new
foreign exchange policy would boost dollar supply and entice foreign
investors who stayed away in recent months fearing they would be caught
in the middle of a naira devaluation.
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