The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) Governor, Godwin Emefiele yesterday said $10 billion is spent annually on medical and education tourism.

Speaking during the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) meeting in Lagos, he said education and health sectors are critical sectors that the CBN will continue to support.

He said Nigeria cannot afford to relegate both sectors to the background.

According to Emefiele, the CBN has intervened in the health sector, with to support the sector to render services to the people.

“We need to do our best to ensure we stop medical and educational tourism and use the forex for other critical sectors of the economy,” he said.

Emefiele said it has disbursed N4.44 billion to three healthcare projects under the Healthcare Sector Intervention Facility (HSIF), bringing the cumulative disbursements to N133.42 billion for 129 projects.

These projects, he said, include 76 hospitals, 32 pharmaceuticals and 21 other healthcare services.

“To further expand the nation’s non-oil export basket under the Export Facilitation Initiative (EFI), the bank released the sum of N36.00 billion for five projects in domestic production and value addition of cocoa and sesame seeds towards improving non-oil foreign currency revenue,” he said.

Also, as part of its effort to support the manufacturing sector, the CBN disbursed the sum of N113.08 billion to 19 new projects under the Real Sector Facility.

“The funds were utilized for both greenfield and brownfield projects under the COVID-19 Intervention for the Manufacturing Sector (CIMS) and the Real Sector Support Facility from Differentiated Cash Reserve Requirement (RSSF-DCRR).

Cumulative disbursements under the Real Sector Facility currently stands at N2.183 trillion for the financing of 414 real sector projects across the country”.