Nigeria’s gross external reserves decline

Nigeria’s gross external reserves stood at US$ 44.96 billion at the end of the second quarter of 2013, indicating a drop of 6.1% when compared with the preceding quarter which recorded US$ 47.88 billion, the Central Bank of Nigerian (CBN) said in its second quarterly economic report for the year 2013.

The report, placed on the CBN website, contained current financial and economic information on the country.

The report which highlights and analyses developments in the financial, fiscal, real sector and external sectors of the economy, provides a mixed performance of the second largest economy in Africa.

“A breakdown of the reserves showed that the CBN reserves stood at US$ 36.68 billion (81.6 per cent), Federation reserves were US$ 6.98 billion (15.5 per cent) and the Federal Government reserves stood at US$ 1.30 billion (2.9 per cent),’ the report said.

Sectoral utilisation of foreign exchange shows that the invisible sector accounted for the bulk amounting to 60.4% of total foreign exchange disbursed in the second quarter of 2013.

This is followed by mineral and oil sector with 11.5%. Other beneficiary sectors included industrial sector — 11.2 %, food products — 9.3 %, manufactured products — 5.1 %, transport sector — 1.9 % and agricultural products — 0.6%.

According to the report, “Foreign exchange inflow and outflow through the Central Bank of Nigeria amounted to US$ 9.44 billion and US$ 12.45 billion respectively, resulting in a net outflow of US$ 3.01 billion during the quarter.

‘Foreign exchange sales by the CBN to authorized dealers amounted to US$ 10.77 billion, compared with US$ 4.65 billion in the preceding quarter.’

It added that the total federally-collected revenue at the end of the second quarter of 2013 declined by 2.3% and 5.2 % below the receipts in the preceding quarter and the corresponding quarter of 2012, respectively.

Oil receipts, which constituted 76.5% of the total revenue, declined below the budget estimate and receipts in the preceding quarter by 6.2% and 194% respectively.

The decrease in oil receipts was attributed largely to the fall in all components of oil revenue, except domestic crude oil/gas sales during the review quarter.

Non-oil receipts were below the budget estimate and receipts in the preceding quarter by 38.3% and 3.3 % respectively.

The report, quoting available data from the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), showed that estimated Gross Domestic Product (GDP) grew by 6.7 % in the second quarter of 2013, compared with 6.6 % in the preceding quarter.

The development was attributed largely to the increase in the contribution of the non-oil sector.