Nigeria Economic Update (Issue 37)

Naira appreciated in the week under review. At the parallel market, naira gained 0.54 percent to exchange at N368/$ on June 23, 20175. This is at the backdrop of injections into the forex market by the CBN to the tune of $195 million at the beginning of the review week, to meet various forex demands. This is amid a slight week-on-week increase in the external reserves (by 0.1 percent to $30.23 billion). Despite the recent naira appreciation, the long-term prospects seem bleak given that the ongoing intervention that seeks to stabilize naira by depleting reserves is unsustainable.

A recent report by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) indicates that Internally Generated Revenue (IGR) at the subnational level decreased slightly between 2014 and 2015. Specifically, the report shows that on the average, the IGR of all 36 states declined by 3.6 per cent from N707.9 billion in 2014 to N683.6 billion in 20157. A further disaggregation reveals that while IGR in 11 states improved in 2015 compared to 2014, IGR in 24 states were below their 2014 levels. As expected, Lagos state generated the most IGR during the period. Given that domestic resource mobilization is the most viable alternative to complement the shortfalls (driven by lower oil prices) in budgetary allocations to states from the federal government, state governments need to do more to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of revenue collection.