Foreign exchange, forex inflow into Nigeria has slumped by over 67% to $14.68billion, statistics obtained from the website of the Central Bank of Nigeria, CBN, revealed.
According to the data, total forex inflows in 18 months amounted to $224billion, while the outflows stood at $76billion. The invisible or service sector led the utilisation chart by accounting for $2.08billion to beat Agriculture, the primary sector to a distant 7th position with paltry $49.94million, Daily Sun reports.
The invisible sector comprises the “soft” parts of the economy, where people offer their knowledge and time to improve productivity, performance, potential, and sustainability, which is termed as affective labour.
The basic characteristic of this sector is the production of services instead of end products. Services (also known as intangible goods) include attention, advice, access, experience, and discussion.
According to the data, during the first six months of 2014, 2015 and 2016, the nation got $157.2billion, $52.12billion and $14.68billion, in that order, as inflows, while the outflows for the same period stood at $76billion, comprising $27.16billion in 2014; $21.84billion in 2015 and $14.35billion in 2016.
As for the forex utilisation, the apex bank, in its Economic Report for the Second Quarter of 2016, states that sectoral utilisation shows that “the invisible sector accounted for 34.1per cent, which formed the bulk of total forex disbursed in the second quarter of 2016, followed by the industrial sub-sector, 22.5 per cent.
The contributions of other sectors in a descending order included: minerals and oil sub-sector, 23.3 per cent, manufactured products, 11.3 per cent; food products, 6.3 per cent; transport sector, 1.7 per cent and agricultural products, 0.8 per cent.”
This implies that the amount allocated and utilised by each of the sectors, out of the $6.09 billion outflow from the central bank, stands as follows: invisible sector, $2.06billion; industrial, $1.37billion; minerals & oil sub-sector, $1.42billion; manufactured products, $688.17million; food products,$383.67millio;transport sector, $103.53million and agricultural products,$49.94million.
Giving reasons for the downward trend in forex inflows, the apex bank explains: “Provisional data showed that foreign exchange inflow and ouflow through the CBN in the second quarter of 2016 were US$5.89 billion and US$6.09 billion respectively.
This resulted in a net outflow of US$0.20 billion, compared with the net outflow of US$0.54 billion in the preceding quarter. Relative to the level at the end of the preceding quarter, inflow increased by 49.3 per cent, but was a decline of 15.6 per cent, compared with the level at the end of the corresponding period of 2015.
The development, relative to the preceding quarter was due to the increase in both oil and non-oil receipts. Similarly, outflow rose by 35.7 per cent above the level in the preceding quarter, but was 25.7 per cent lower than the level at the end of the corresponding period of 2015. The development, relative to the preceding quarter, was driven mainly by interbank sales, swaps and 3rd party MDA transfer.
