$160 million spent on foreign exchange on food import in January

According to figures obtained from the Central Bank of Nigeria, it was revealed that Nigeria spent $160 million on foreign exchange on food import in January.

The CBN’s economic report on ‘Sectoral utilisation of foreign exchange’ for January showed that the figure was lower than $310 million spent on foreign exchange on food import in December.

The report says, “Total foreign exchange utilisation by sectors decreased by 40.3 per cent from the preceding month to $2.75bn, reflecting a drop in end-user demand for foreign exchange, owing to year-end ease in economic activities”.

“Visible and invisible imports, constituting 46.9 per cent and 53.1 per cent of the total foreign exchange utilisation declined by 53.4 per cent and 20.7 per cent to $0.77bn and $0.87bn respectively”.

“A disaggregation of foreign exchange utilisation for visible transactions showed that the amount utilised for industrial, manufactured products, and food products sub-sectors amounted to $0.30bn, $0.23bn, and $0.16bn respectively, relative to $0.72bn, $0.38bn, and $0.31bn in the preceding month”.

“Also, oil, transport, agriculture, and mineral subsectors amounted to $0.05bn, $0.02bn, $0.008bn, and $0.006bn, respectively, in January 2021, compared with $0.15bn, $0.05bn, $0.02bn, and $0.02bn in December 2020.”

A disaggregation of the foreign exchange utilisation for invisible transactions showed that financial services stood at $0.81bn and accounted for 49.3 per cent of the total.

The share of other sectors were business services, $14.91m (0.9 per cent); educational services, $26.44m (1.6 per cent); health related, $0.14m (0.01 per cent); transport services, $12.97m (0.8 per cent); and communication services, $1.78m (0.1 per cent).

Other services not included elsewhere received $6.73m (0.4 per cent).