91-Day Treasury Bills: T-bill rate has highly fluctuated overtime on the account of the rise and fall in investor confidence, monetary policy easing/tightening, governments demand for funds, and infl

OPEC Monthly oil report reveals that Nigeria recorded the highest month-on-month increase in crude oil production among the OPEC member countries in August 2017. Specifically, at an increasing rate of 8 percent, domestic oil production rose to pre-2016 level of 1.86 million barrels per day in August 2017. With ongoing repairs in the sector, oil production could get to 2.2 million barrels per day in the near term, albeit the prior voluntary agreement to cap production at 1.8 million barrels per day. Going forward, there is need to address poor planning and policy inconsistencies in the sector, in order to ensure the influx of investors who have channeled their investments to other African countries due to laxity in policies in the sector.

Recent data by the CBN shows a decline in manufacturing capacity utilization by 2.0 percentage points to 50.7 percent in 2016Q2. Foreign exchange challenges in addition to cash squeeze in the review quarter, led to the decline in capacity utilization. This has hindered activities in the sector while impacting negatively on business confidence. Nonetheless, the CBN recently directed authorized FX dealers to dedicate 60 percent of FX purchases to manufacturers. This policy measure is therefore expected to meet the sectors critical FX need for the purchase of imported raw material and other machineries, while boosting the potential for economic growth in the long term.