The recent movements in the dollar-naira exchange rate, following the removal of the currency peg, has stimulated ongoing debate in the media that South Africa has regained its position as the largest economy in Africa. The prevailing notion is that the depreciation of the naira and simultaneous appreciation of the rand against the US dollar implies that South Africa’s GDP has surpassed that of Nigeria. However, this argument needs some re-examination, given that the value of the GDP (in current US$) is sensitive to the choice of exchange rate and GDP figures used for its computation. This piece situates the present argument in the context of recent commodity market crisis and its implications for the two largest economies in Sub-Saharan Africa
Policy Brief & Alerts
March 11, 2018
A Note On The Economic Downturn In Sub-Saharan Africa
The recent movements in the dollar-naira exchange rate, following the removal of the currency peg, has stimulated ongoing debate in the media that South Africa has regained its position as the largest economy in Africa. The prevailing notion is that the depreciation of the naira and simultaneous appreciation of the rand against the US dollar […]
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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.