Macroeconomic Report & Economic Updates
September 16, 2016
Nigeria Economic Update (Issue 39)
Nigerias
external reserve fell marginally by from $25.36 billion to $25.16 billion.
The decline likely reflects the continued sales of dollar by CBN amid fall in
oil revenue. Similarly, the naira/dollar exchange rate depreciated marginally
by 0.5 percent to N424/$ at the parallel segmentas also seen in
preceding weeks. The continued depreciation likely points to banks low level
compliance to CBNs dollar sales directive made in August, 2016,
thus creating artificial dollar scarcity in the parallel market.
Related
Portfolio Diversification Between Developed And Less Developed Economies
This study
examines the hedging effectiveness of portfolio investment diversification
between developed and developing economies; with focus on the Nigerian stock
asset vis--vis the stock assets of the United States (US) and United Kingdom
(UK). Its main contribution is in the analysis of optimal portfolio
diversification using optimal portfolio weight (OPW) and optimal hedging ratio
(OHR). Empirical findings show that the OPW and OHR are low, which indicates impressive
potential gains from combining Nigerian stock assets in an investment portfolio
with US and UK stock assets. In addition, exchange rate volatility is found to
pose stern limitation on the potential benefits of this portfolio
diversification arrangement. It is therefore recommended that the monetary
authority in Nigeria should pursue policies towards reducing exchange rate
volatility to the barest minimum. This will possibly attract more investors
from developed economies who might be willing to combine Nigerian stock in
their investment portfolio to minimize portfolio risk.
Multidimensional Impact Evaluation:
Ending (extreme) poverty in all of its forms everywhere around the world continues to dominate the International Development Agenda (UN 2015).
However, while poverty is declining in much of the developing world, data from the World Development Report (WDR) Conflict, Security, and Development reveal that fragile and conflict-affected states are lagging behind. The report points out that 'Poverty rates are 20 percentage points higher in countries affected by repeated cycles of violence over the last three decades. Indeed, with the worlds extreme poor over represented in fragile and conflict-affected ,some authors argue that violent conflict is development in reverse