Macroeconomic Report & Economic Updates

Media highlights show that recent figures from the Nigeria Investment Promotion Council (NIPC) reveals a progressive inflow of capital into Nigeria. Specific figures indicate that Nigeria’s actual capital investment inflow stood at $84.3 billion as at 2018Q1¹, growing by 27 percent from the $66.4 billion recorded for the whole 2017 fiscal year. Notably, highlights suggest that the capital investment flows have been invested in 112 projects domiciled in 28 states in Nigeria, including the FCT. The increased capital inflow gives a fair sense of growing investors’ interest in the Nigerian economy, as well as their involvements in capital investment projects.

Nigeria’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP), maintained positive growth rate two quarters after emergence from recession in 2017Q2, thus consolidating the recovery process. Specifically, real GDP grew by 1.92 percent in 2017Q4, a slight increase from the 1.40 percent in the previous quarter and a huge recovery compared to the contraction (-1.73 percent) during the corresponding quarter in 2016. Notably, the 2017 fiscal year recorded an annual real GDP growth rate of 0.83 percent, significantly increasing Year-on-Year by 2.41 percentage points.  

Month-on-Month analysis of food prices show that average prices of selected food items reduced from December 2017 to January 2018. Precisely, total average month-on-month price decreased from 2.48 percent to 1.19 percent, with reductions in unit prices of items such as eggs, chicken, beef, rice, fish, and palm oil among others. Food prices which remains largely volatile in the short term, may have reduced in the review period due to a slight fall in consumer demand following the end of the festive period. Looking forward, the decline in food prices may be short-lived in the absence of yield-enhancing investments that can sustain food production/supply. Hence, the government should promote policies that alleviate the credit constraints to yield-enhancing investment in the private sector.

The federal government fiscal operations in 2017 shows that there were deficits for the four quarters recorded. The CBN report reveals that the federal government spent a total of N147.11 billion on capital expenditure in the four quarters (including a 2016 fiscal year roll-over due todelay in approving the 2017 budget), and N3.64 trillion as recurrent expenditure in 2017. Capital releases suggest that only about 6.6 percent of budgetary amount of N2.24 trillion was spent in the fiscal year, while recurrent expenditure represented 72 percent of N5.06 trillion budgeted for the year. Nigeria’s recurrent expenditure has always exceeded capital expenditure for infrastructure, however, the delay in the passage of the 2017 budget (in June 2017) may have triggered the slow-down in capital releases. Nonetheless, the 2017 budget is still being followed, given that the 2018 budget has not been passed. Going forward, the process of the 2018 budget release should be expedited, as delay in budget sends negative signals to foreign investors which could make them divert capital investment to other countries.

The national accounts for 2017Q4 show that the aviation sector grew year-on-year by 4.7 percent in real terms - significantly higher than the 0.48 percent in preceding quarter but significantly lower than the 13.3 percent in the corresponding quarter of 2016 Drawing from the data recently provided by the NBS, it can be inferred that the increase in the number of both domestic and international passenger traffic in the fourth quarter (by 4.9 percent YOY to 3.7 million passengers) may have partly driven the YOY real growth in the sector. This is in addition to remarkable increases in aircrafts and mail movements – by 4.6 percent and 229.6 percent respectively.