Nigeria Records $710million Foreign Investment In Q1 2016

The total value of foreign investment flow into the country in the first quarter of 2016 was $710.97 million, the National Bureau of Statistics, NBS, on Wednesday, May 4 revealed.

The Bureau also revealed that the value indicated a year-on-year decline of 73.79 per cent..

Last week, $5.25 million was repatriated from the economy through investment firms, banks and airlines, as the Central Bank of Nigeria, CBN, sold $54,973,397.70 through seven banks last week.

Blakeney Management, a London-based investment firm, last week repatriated $2million while Standard Chartered Bank took out $2,014,874.51. Also DZ Private Bank withdrew $485,125.49 from the economy while Air France took out $750,000 as remittances.

The Q1 2016 figure is the lowest capital importation value recorded since the series began in 2007. Both the quarterly and year-on-year declines were also the lowest recorded since the series began. As a result of these changes, total capital importation fell by 89.13% since its peak level in the third quarter of 2014.

According to the NBS, the scale of the decline in capital importation in the first quarter of 2016 is symptomatic of the challenging period that the Nigerian economy is going through following the fall in crude oil prices.

It said: “Although there a number of reasons why the amount of capital imported in recent years may have been higher than usual (such as the inclusion of Nigerian in the JP Morgan Bond Index, and globally low interest rates triggering a search for higher yields over this period), the fact that the amount of capital imported has dropped to a record low suggests that there are further reasons why Nigeria has attracted less foreign investment in recent quarters.