Nigeria’s central bank on Friday said it will restrict the sale of dollars at its auctions to foreign companies taking the currency offshore, in a further measure to limit local foreign exchange demand and support the weakening naira.

The regulator said foreign investors were guaranteed to repatriate their earnings and proceeds of investments offshore but they could only seek dollars for such purposes from the open market, limiting forex demand at its auction.

“All remittances in respect of dividends, capital and proceeds of investments … shall be through the use of autonomous funds (interbank),” central bank said in a circular to banks. Nigeria’s imports totalled N3.3 trillion ($20.6 billion) in the second quarter of this year, while exports were N3.5 trillion, the National Bureau of Statistics said on Friday.

The NBS said Nigeria imported the most from China, N390 billion in the second quarter, followed by the United States and France.

The largest partners for exports, mostly crude oil, were U.S. followed by India and Brazil.

The unemployment in the country rose to 21.1 per cent of the labour force in 2010 from 19.7 per cent in 2009, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS)said. “Out of the total labour force of 61.5 million, the unemployment rate, which is the proportion of labour force, not the entire population, that is available, willing and able to work or not working for at least 40 hours a week on average, was 21.1 percent (12,979,125 Nigerians) in 2010. This represented a 1.4 percent increase over the 2009 figure of 19.7 percent,” Yemi Kale, the head of NBS, told reporters in Abuja.