Macroeconomic Report & Economic Updates

The World Bank’s recently unveiled Human Capital Index ranks Nigeria at 152^nd position out of the 157 countries surveyed, with a value of 0.34.  Nigeria is placed below several other sub-Saharan African countries. The poor ranking likely accounts for long years...

The World Bank’s recent Africa Pulse publication reveals a revised 2018 growth rate forecast for Nigeria from the earlier projected 2.1 percent to 1.9 percent¹ – representing a slight downward review. The revision was premised around what the institution termed “sluggish growth” amid rising debts, and a myriad of factors including declining oil production, disruptions in agricultural activities occasioned by the incessant herdsmen and farmers clashes, and effects of climate change. The contraction in the agricultural sector stalled crop production and dampened prospects of increased non-oil growth, all of which stunted economic recovery². With the continued implementation of the Economic Recovery and Growth Plan (2017-2020), there are strong possibilities that the economy may benefit from revenue sources other than oil in the near future.

Nigeria’s all products terms of trade (calculated as the receipts of exports as a percentage of payments for imports), indicated increases in the three months of 2018Q2. Indexed at an average of 110.8% in 2018Q2¹, the favourable TOT reflects improvement from an average of 99.2% in 2018Q1. A further breakdown shows that TOT indices for April, May and June stood at 100.5%, 111.1% and 109.2% respectively which implies that the value of exports exceeded imports by 0.5%, 11.1% and 9.02% in each of the months. The positive trade position is attributable to improvements in mineral, animal and vegetable products group, as reported. With renewed interest in the Agric and mineral sectors by the government and private sector, we expect an improvement in the trade position.

The 2017 budget implementation report shows a paltry average performance in 2017, compared to the projections contained in the budget. The actual oil and non-oil revenue generated were N1.1 trillion and N957 billion respectively, considerably below the projected figures of N2.1 trillion¹ and N1.4 trillion. Other revenue sources brought the total revenue generated to N2.7 trillion. However, on the expenditure side, the combination of personnel expenditure and debt repayments amounted to N3.5 trillion, which exceeded total revenue by N885 billion. This implies that Nigeria borrowed to pay salaries and service debts in 2017. As long as the culture of making unrealistic budget projections continues, we expect to record low budget implementation going forward. To address the wide gap between actual and expected budget performance, better forecast of future revenue alongside making less ambitious spending plans is critical.

The recent report by United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) shows that Nigeria’s Human Development Index (HDI) value rose very marginally from 0.530 in 2016 to 0.532 in 2017¹. However, overall, the ranking remained unchanged at 157^th position out of 189 sample countries – putting the nation in the low human development category, and below Ghana, Kenya and a few other sub-Saharan countries. The HDI criteria which are broadly inclusive of countries’ social, political and economic diversity and indicative of the quality of life, may have shown limited progress in Nigeria due to rising population² (currently, the population stands at 190.1 million). In the population growth and absence of the political will to address the sub-optimal HDI, signalled by the historic low budget share allocated to the education and health sectors, significant improvements in the HDI is not foreseeable in the near future.