Nigeria's oil savings recover to $3.45 bln, inflation down to 7.7 pct

Nigeria's oil savings account recovered to $3.45 billion by last week, from a low of $2.11 billion at the previous accounting, Finance Minister Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala said on Sunday.
The Excess Crude Account (ECA) had been radically depleted over 2013. It contained $8.65 billion in December 2012 but a year later, it had just $2.11 billion.
Critics say the money has been largely squandered on patronage ahead of 2015 elections, a charge the government denies. Okonjo-Iweala said Nigeria had to dip into its savings because of production outages caused by rampant oil theft.
However, inflation slowed to 7.7 percent year-on-year in February, from 8 percent in January, the National Bureau of Statistics said.
Food inflation moderated slightly to 9.2 percent, versus 9.3 percent in January, the bureau said.
Nigeria's central bank has an official target of keeping consumer inflation between 6 and 9 percent this year and a longer-term goal of reducing inflation to around 5 percent by the end of 2015.