Macroeconomic Report & Economic Updates

Recent media highlights suggest that there is a prospective decrease in Nigerias budgetary benchmark crude oil production. Precisely, the 1.8 million barrels per day proposed at the Joint OPEC and Non-OPEC Ministerial Monitoring Committee (JMMC) meeting, is 18.2 percent lower than the budgetary production benchmark of 2.2 million barrels per day. This followed OPECs recent review to include Nigeria in the ongoing production cut agreement amid concerns of global oil market oversupply, given the constant production increase from Nigeria over the last few months.

Global oil price edged upwards in the review week. International crude benchmark, Brent, rose week-on-week by 3.1 percent to $50 per barrel as at July 21, 20173 a level it had not attained since June. The remarkable gains followed demand-side progress earlier statistics from China showed increase in crude imports, indicating prospects of higher demand. This was also complimented by the huge drop in US domestic crude production (Crude reserves fell by 4.7 million barrels). If the trend is sustained, Nigeria could record further rise in its Gross Federally Collected Revenue. Nevertheless, there remains a need for Nigeria to overcome the challenge of harnessing its oil and gas resources by making strategic policy choices andensuring coordination in policy implementation to minimize macroeconomic distortions.

Latest monthly economic report by the CBN reveals a decline in foreign exchange flows through the CBN. Foreign exchange inflow through the apex bank, dropped Month-on-Month by 21 percent to $2.3 billion in May 2017, occasioned by the fall in from Oil and Non-oil sources during the month.